


this isn't a game

by iron_spider



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Video Game 2018), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker is a hero, Precious Peter Parker, Spider-Man PS4 + MCU, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-10-06 09:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 58,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17342780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iron_spider/pseuds/iron_spider
Summary: Peter will admit to himself that he wasn’t ready, he wasn’t ready to face Fisk, wasn’t ready to deal with what went down between them or how it went down, and he’s surprised it even came out in his favor.He’s got a notepad file that’s set to send off to both Tony and May if he ever dies, and Karen knows exactly when to send it. The moment she’s sure his heart has stopped beating, and stopped beating for good. He was sure, when he was swinging up the layers of Fisk’s tower, that they’d be reading those words. He still kinda worries that he’s stuck in some kind of last moments before death, synapses misfiring, lying there broken amongst the glass and blood and lamenting the people he’s leaving behind.“Hey,” Tony says, scooting forward again. He shakes his head, bracing his hand on Peter’s other arm, and despite the nervous energy in the room, the touch is calming. “The guy’s a dickhead. Old school mafia wannabe. And I am proud of you, honestly,” he says. “I just…you know how I hate this. How we all hate this.”(Spider-man PS4's plot, set in the MCU)





	1. the end is the beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Spider-Man PS4's plotline is awesome. As I was playing it, I realized, what could make this more awesome? If it was in the MCU. So here is my version of the PS4 game's plot with the MCU's characters, set in a post-Infinity War world. I hope you enjoy.

Peter closes his eyes. 

“You good?” Tony’s voice asks, amongst the high pitched tone still echoing in Peter’s ears. Tony waits about a millisecond before letting in the note of panic. “Peter. You good?”

“I’m fine,” Peter says. 

He never knows what he means when he says that. It’s like a built-in excuse stuck to the roof of his mouth, ready to be presented when he feels anything but _fine_. If he wasn’t Spiderman, he’d probably be dead right now. He’d be in Mount Sinai bleeding internally, unable to speak or move or cry or ask for the people he loves most. But he is Spiderman, and despite the beating he took from Wilson Fisk, he’s here. He’s healing. And Fisk is heading to prison.

The TV is blaring the news of Spiderman’s big win, in a battle that Peter would never want to replay even if somebody paid him a million dollars to do it. There’s glass under his fingernails still, and he can feel the suit in tatters even though he’s not wearing it anymore. Fisk is a powerhouse, and every hurl of those hunks of meat he considers fists nearly drove Peter into the ground. When they went over the railing, hurdling towards the atrium, it felt like they were falling forever. It felt like Fisk might grab him by the ankle, yank him down, smash his skull into the tile. Blood and brains everywhere. Eyeballs popping out. Peter can almost feel it. He can almost hear May wailing over his broken body, grasping at him, trying to bring him back to life even though he’s in a thousand pieces. Tony’s need for revenge would pulse through the whole city, even though he doesn’t jump into the action anymore, after what happened with Thanos. He can’t, Peter keeps reminding himself, he can’t and he shouldn’t, but Peter knows that if Fisk had killed him, Tony would have done something about it. He might have died trying, but he would have tried anyway. Bum leg and all.

“Was he throwing knives at you or something?” Tony asks, still diligently working on Peter’s left arm. “Jesus Christ.” His voice is wavering.

“Lots of glass,” Peter says. It was exploding everywhere, bullets ricocheting off steel beams, trip wires being pulled by the same idiots that put them there. 

Peter opens his eyes again. He sees that Bruce is looking at him over his glasses as he analyzes Peter’s broken arm, the right one this time, and he mentally checks off—three for the right, six for the left, and that’s gotta have some kind of repercussions along the way, doesn’t it? Even for Spiderman, with superhealing? How many goddamn times can one guy break his arms? He feels like he’s tapping into Bruce’s train of thought and clears his throat, looking at Tony. “So, like—how mad is May? On a scale of—”

“She’s at the top of every scale you can think of,” Tony says, wrapping up Peter’s wrist with a surprisingly gentle hand. “She’s at a red hot eleven.”

Peter can see her from where he is, through the glass walls a couple rooms over. She’s in the room with the green couch with Ned and Pepper, and Peter doesn’t even know how the hell Tony got them here so fast, but he figures he shouldn’t be questioning Tony’s methods this late in the game. Tony was able to reset a shitty timeline where half the universe was dead. Tony pulled Peter back from that void-world and stopped a purple alien from killing him again. Tony got away from the battle of the century with only a few scratches and a fucked-up leg. Somehow, he’s cooler when he walks with a cane. Peter’s seen Tony do so much shit in the time he’s known him that he thinks he’s probably capable of anything. 

“Thank God you bought the tower back,” Bruce says, softly, glancing over at Tony, almost like Peter isn’t there. “Don’t even know if I would have had time to realign this arm if we were working from the compound.”

“Sorry, Doc,” Peter says. “I know the broken arms are a point of contention with you.”

“You’ve broken your arms more times than I can count,” Bruce says, stern.

“I’ve kept count!” Peter says.

“Yeah,” Tony mumbles. “Me too.”

Peter sighs. He looks over again, sees visual evidence of Ned being a weirdo around pregnant women, fluttering around Pepper like an injured bird. Peter meets May’s gaze and even from this distance, he can see the worry there. He’s happy there’s more worry than anger, even though he doesn’t like to worry her. The anger is definitely worse.

“So, should we talk about this shit?” Tony asks, sitting back, his rolling chair pulling him closer to the wall. He crosses his arms over his chest, sucks in a deep breath, switching over to Dad mode swiftly. Doesn’t even care that Bruce is in the room.

“Uh, I’d prefer a ‘congrats, Peter’, or a ‘great job, kid, taking out the big guy!’ Both are good.” He winces, his eyes going starry when Bruce snaps his arm a certain way. 

Tony shakes his head. “You shouldn’t have taken him on by yourself.”

Peter sighs again. He doesn’t say this out loud, because it would be a lethal dose of guilt, but it isn’t like he has a lot of backup, lately. Almost everybody’s cleared out of New York but Tony, Bruce, Rhodey and Strange, and the latter is unreachable no matter what the situation, no matter how long Peter plasters himself against that stained glass window and threatens to break it again. Thor is in Norway settling New Asgard, Clint and Natasha are off the grid, though Peter is sure he’ll be hearing from them soon once they see the news. Bucky and Steve are in Colorado, in a retirement similar to Tony’s with less debilitating injuries. Wanda and Vision are permanently in Europe, Scott and Hope are in California, and even though Bruce is here, the Hulk is done, at least for now. In more horrifying developments, May has been dating Sam for six months, but he’s out of town more often than he’s in town. Peter is still expecting his patented angry text messages when he, too, finds out what went down between Spiderman and Fisk.

“The police just got enough evidence to take him in,” Peter says, looking at Tony, trying not to wince again when Bruce does something else awful to his arm. “But he walled off that place like Fort Knox, he was gonna take the whole place down and the surrounding area with him, he was already trying to get his goons to pick off police and I just—I had to act quick. I couldn’t wait for whoever to make their way back to the city and back me up.”

It wasn’t the exact phrase he’d been worrying about moments before, but it’s close enough, and this time it’s Tony who’s wincing. Peter cracks his jaw and looks at the TV, which he knows isn’t actually blaring, it’s probably on level five or six, but after a big fight his senses are always going haywire, and this time isn’t any exception. In fact, this time might be worse. 

“ _Spiderman and Fisk nearly decimated Fisk Tower in their battle, but in the end, despite the destruction, Spiderman was able to do something no one else has done before, serving Fisk up on a platter for the police to take into custody. Spiderman himself did not hang around for comment, but Fisk had plenty to say as he was being loaded up into the police vehicle._ ”

The image on the TV switches from the dark-haired reporter to Fisk himself, bloodied and webbed up and broken, the way Peter left him. This must be footage from earlier, definitely not live, but it still makes Peter’s skin crawl. 

Fisk is struggling against the police officers who have him in hand, but he’s clearly not at his full strength, because if he was he would have been able to paint the sidewalk with all of them. “ _You’ll all regret this!_ ” Fisk yells, as they load him into the car. “ _Spiderman—you, you will regret this! The city will crumble in my wake!_ ”

The scene switches back to the news studio and Peter sinks a little bit into the bed, closing his eyes again. The cut across his forehead is bothering him, and he narrows his eyes, raising his eyebrows, letting the skin pull and bunch under the butterfly bandages. He’ll admit to himself that he wasn’t ready, he wasn’t ready to face Fisk, wasn’t ready to deal with what went down between them or how it went down, and he’s surprised it even came out in his favor.

He’s got a notepad file that’s set to send off to both Tony and May if he ever dies, and Karen knows exactly when to send it. The moment she’s sure his heart has stopped beating, and stopped beating for good. He was sure, when he was swinging up the layers of Fisk’s tower, that they’d be reading those words. He still kinda worries that he’s stuck in some kind of last moments before death, synapses misfiring, lying there broken amongst the glass and blood and lamenting the people he’s leaving behind. 

Bruce snaps his arm again and Peter hisses, looking over at him. Bruce clicks his tongue and doesn’t say sorry. Peter’s really gotta work on not breaking his arms. Bruce straightens up and moves away, cracking his knuckles and turning his back on them. 

“Hey,” Tony says, scooting forward again. He shakes his head, bracing his hand on Peter’s other arm, and despite the nervous energy in the room, the touch is calming. “The guy’s a dickhead. Old school mafia wannabe. And I am proud of you, honestly,” he says. “I just…you know how I hate this. How we all hate this.”

“You know we hate this,” Bruce repeats, from over his shoulder, messing with something on the laptop that’s perched on the counter. 

“But I know you’re the new generation, all that…” Tony trails off. 

“I’m okay,” Peter says, smiling. It’s not an I’m fine and it feels more true. He is okay—he isn’t perfect, but he’s here, he did Fisk in, he didn’t get killed. He’s okay.

“Yeah,” Tony says, clearing his throat. 

“ _—and we thank Spiderman, and all the first responders, for their work here today,_ ” Mayor Norman Osborn’s voice says on the TV. “ _We’re looking forward to a new dawn in our great city, now out from behind the shadow of Wilson Fisk._ ”

Tony clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes. 

“You’re good,” Bruce says, turning around and crossing his arms over his chest. “I did all I can do, the arm should heal right now.”

“Thanks, Bruce,” Peter says. “Swear I won’t do it again.”

“I’d honestly be happier if you broke your leg,” Bruce says. “At least that’d be a change of pace.”

“Don’t go giving him ideas,” Tony says, scooting backwards again. 

“Well, hopefully everything’ll be better now,” Bruce says, adjusting his glasses on his face. “You know, back to basics? Stopping muggings, bank robberies, jewelry heists. The basics!” He blows out a breath and starts walking towards the exit. “Tell May to come in?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Tony says. 

“If anybody needs me, I’ll be skyping with Thor,” Bruce says. “Tell him all about your antics.”

“Great,” Peter laughs.

The door closes behind him and Peter looks at Tony again. Peter feels like he’s figured out how to read him pretty well at this point, but there’s something behind his eyes that Peter can’t place. He doesn’t ask him if he’s okay, because he’s dealt with Tony snapping at him whenever he asks that from a hospital bed enough times to know he doesn’t like it. 

“These guys—these big guys, other costumed guys with their own weird tech or their bigass security teams, their illegal firearms, alien bomb cores, partridge in a pear tree…just…anyone that can overwhelm you…let’s try to get some backup for that bullshit, okay?” Tony asks. “We’ll figure out who when the time comes, but I don’t like the idea of you barreling into these situations on your own. I know you’re Spiderman, big man on campus, and I don’t wanna step on your toes, but…I’m gonna step on your toes.” He clears his throat, looks off to the side, where May is making her way to the room.

Tony looks at Peter again. “You know I can’t lose you, kid. Not again. Heart can’t handle it, you know I’m ailing.”

That makes Peter’s chest go a little tight and he shakes his head, thoughts of death and unread notepad messages fading from his mind. “You won’t,” Peter says. “C’mon, you know I’m like…the most careful person there is. You’ve seen me make grilled cheese.”

Tony snorts, looking up as the door opens. Peter watches as May walks in and he tenses up, waiting for the onslaught that he’s heard so many times before. She exchanges a look with Tony, one of those unspoken things they’ve gotten so good at in the past few years, and she sighs. 

“I’m sure you’ve heard it all already,” she says, looking at Peter.

“I haven’t used the word reckless yet,” Tony says. “I know you like that one.”

“What about in over his head?” May asks, light, like they’re talking about the weather. “Covered that?”

“Not in so many words,” Tony says.

Peter sighs. “I mean. I took care of business. He’s behind bars. I think I did okay.” At that, his arm throbs and pulses, just to spite him.

May and Tony look at each other again. More silent communication, and sometimes it’s kinda irritating, yeah, Peter isn’t gonna lie to himself. But then May’s shoulders sag and she walks over, sitting on the bed on the same side where Tony is, clearly staying away from Peter’s ragged looking right arm. “I know you’re a superhero,” she says. “I know this. I know this now.”

“You sure?” Peter asks, laughing a little bit.

“It’s just hard,” she says, looking at him, then back at Tony. “It’s hard separating things. God, they had all this helicopter footage on the news and I could see you and him and everything he was throwing at you—it’s just—for most people it’s just Spiderman, doing his thing, but to us—”

“—it’s Peter Parker,” Tony says. “The kid who pours the milk in before the cereal like a lunatic.”

“The kid who cried over that orange kitten he found for like an hour.”

“The kid who wears the stealth suit I made for him around the tower when Happy’s here just to get a rise out of him.”

“The kid who’s gonna graduate in a couple months,” May says, enunciating every word. “The kid who has some very good college prospects stuck to our fridge.”

God, that’s something he absolutely doesn’t want to think about right now. He’s gotta stop them before they go any further. “Okay,” Peter sighs. “I know.” 

“But there’s nothing you can do about that,” May says, clearing her throat. “How we see you, how we see…Spiderman, in relation to you. And we…we know, we’re just…we’re who we are. We’re gonna freak out every time you stub your toe.”

“True facts,” Tony says, and Peter knows it. He doesn’t know how they haven’t both died of heart attacks after everything he’s put them through.

“But we are proud of you,” May says, sincerely. “We are.”

“I did add that part in,” Tony says. 

“Good,” Peter says, instead of thanks or anything else, because their pride makes him feel bigger than he is. Stronger, more capable, like beating Fisk wasn’t just a fluke or dumb luck. Like beating Fisk was the inevitable conclusion because it was Peter fighting him, with May and Tony’s belief in him keeping him on course. “And I am fine,” he says, without meaning to. “I mean—I’m already healing. It’s gonna be fine. It’ll all be fine.”

His eyes dart over to the TV again when May asks Tony something about Peter’s arm. The news is replaying Fisk’s warning, and Peter sees his eyes flash with anger, and a horrible sense of foreboding. 

_Spiderman—you, you will regret this! The city will crumble in my wake!_


	2. a lurking suspicion

“You’re good, right?” Tony asks. “You feel good?”

The green Toyota across the street honks at the bus in front of it like that’s gonna make it move faster, and Peter almost runs into the guy beside him because he’s not looking where he’s going. He dodges around, mouthing an apology, and gets back on course. 

It’s been a week since the Fisk takedown. Sometimes, it feels like longer. But right now, it feels like yesterday. He isn’t really sure why.

“Yes, for the nineteenth time,” Peter says, switching his phone over to his left ear. They’ve been talking since he was a block away from school.

“Oh, you put on your sassy pants today,” Tony says. “Didn’t know you were keeping those at the tower.”

Peter snorts, weaving around an oversized squirrel that’s standing in the middle of the sidewalk. He’s already late for work and Otto always gets so crazy when he’s late, so he picks up the pace a little bit, trying not to run into anybody else. This would be so much easier if he was swinging. 

“For real,” Peter says. “Yeah, I’m fine. School was fine. Arm’s good, forehead’s clean, that thing on my wrist is fading fast.”

“Good,” Tony says.

“How’d the class with Pepper go this morning?” Peter asks. “Lamaze?” 

Tony groans. “Yeah, we’re gonna be doing that privately next time. I don’t know why I ever thought it’d be fine to do that with fifteen other couples.”

“Do I even wanna know?” Peter asks.

“No, you don’t,” Tony says. “Same shit.”

Peter stops at the crosswalk, looks at his watch. Five minutes late. He can see the building from here and he pats his back pocket again to make sure that his badge is still there. 

“May’s being shifty talking about the shelter, she doing the same thing with you?” Tony asks.

“Eh, she’s so busy all the time there that she hardly ever talks about it,” Peter says. “Just too many things to say.” May’s been working at a homeless shelter in Chinatown for the past six months, which has taken up most of her time since she started there. Peter’s been in and out on more than one occasion, and even though she’s busy, he can tell she likes it. “She still says that guy that runs it—”

“—something Linard, right?”

“Manuel Linard, yeah,” Peter says, crossing the street, watching a cab nearly turn into the group of people in front of him. He makes a wide berth around it. “She still says she doesn’t think he’s the type to be into this type of work. Because he’s so rich and fancy.”

Peter grins and Tony scoffs, which is the exact reaction he expected. 

“I cannot even begin to measure the amount of offense I am feeling right now,” Tony says. “You want me to open a homeless shelter? I’ll open a homeless shelter. I’ll open the shit out of a homeless shelter.”

“Do it!” Peter says. 

“I’ve contributed to like, a million shelters,” Tony says. “A bajillion.”

“You’re breaking out the big numbers today.”

“I think your sassy pants are too big for you.”

Peter laughs, jogging up the stairs to the office building that houses Octavius Industries. “Alright, I’m here. See you tonight and good luck with the shareholder meeting.”

Tony groans. “Thanks, I’ll need it. Pesto chicken fine for dinner?”

“Perfect,” Peter says, pushing the main door open and heading for the elevator.

“Alright, buddy. I’ll see you later.”

“See ya!”

He hangs up and steps into the elevator, watching the door struggle to close. This building has to be one of the oldest in the city, and he always has to steel himself for the possibility of this thing breaking down and him having to make a great escape through the elevator shaft. But, thankfully, he makes it to the tenth floor with no incidents. 

The lights in the hallways flicker a sickly green, and he knows the air conditioning still isn’t working up here because a wave of heat hits him as soon as he steps off the elevator. He heard about the opportunity to work with Otto through Bruce, who met him at the Global Chemistry Conference a couple years ago. Peter’s been surrounded by incredible minds since Tony got him involved all that time ago, but Otto is something else. Peter wouldn’t necessarily say he’s smarter than the rest, but he definitely operates in a completely different manner than anyone else Peter’s ever met. It’s like he’s got blinders on, he’s never thinking about anything else other than what he’s working on. Peter knows he’s not married, knows there’s no one in his life. It kind of depresses him sometimes, after being around Tony so much, seeing what Otto doesn’t have. But he is brilliant, and Peter is sure he’s going to change the world.

Peter runs his badge over the scanner and rushes inside.

“Sorry, sorry,” Peter breathes, grabbing his lab coat off the hanger by the door. 

He can see Otto over by his favorite workstation, or what has become his favorite workstation, because everything else is covered in boxes. Before Peter started working for him, Otto had to move out of a bigger lab in Greenwich to this place, and he still hasn’t unpacked everything. The move from Greenwich to the Bowery has been difficult for him, to say the least. The old lab was apparently way bigger, a lot cleaner, with equipment he had to leave behind. This place is tiny, barely a hole in the wall. There are a couple leaks in the ceiling and the lights in here aren’t much better than the ones in the hallway, but they’ve made due. He hasn’t told Otto about the family of raccoons living in the walls, but he’s usually too distracted to hear them skittering around.

“Oh, finally,” Otto says, only briefly looking over his shoulder before he refocuses on his work. “Peter, you’re—I think I’m gonna get you a watch.”

Peter laughs a little bit as he stops alongside him, looking at the prosthetic arm that Otto’s been working on for the past three weeks. “We making progress?” he asks.

“We’re making progress,” Otto says, the controller in his hands. “I’m still working out the kinks, but it’s taking the commands.”

Peter isn’t exactly sure how long Otto’s been making prosthetics for combat veterans, but he does know that the idea of linking it to the brain is relatively new, and lit a fire under Otto that wasn’t there before. He’s always wanting to make things easier, and the mind controlling the prosthetic without any remotes or button pushing has been the goal for a little while now. Peter thinks about Bucky, and wonders what Otto could do if he had vibranium at his disposal.

“We were able to get the tensile actuator back to an acceptable tolerance after your work yesterday,” Otto says, smiling at him. 

“Good,” Peter says, smiling back. “Colonel Solomons coming by tomorrow to try it out?”

“If I get it up to snuff,” Otto says. “Or should I say _we_. Can you check the circuits again? I want to try and upgrade to the new systems but I need to make sure it’s all in order.”

“Of course,” Peter says, walking over to the tablet. 

He likes the way he feels here. He doesn’t have to think about Spiderman, or worry about what’s going on in the streets—he feels like, when he’s got this lab coat on, that he can just leave it to the cops for a couple of hours. And despite the fact that this is a job, which is going to have an impact on his future, he doesn’t think about college here, either. He doesn’t think about the choice between MiT, which he would love to go to, or NYU, which he feels like he has to go to so he can remain in New York. To stay with May and Tony. To keep defending the city as Spiderman. He knows he has to make a decision soon, that he’s already pushing it longer than he should. Whenever he thinks about it his chest goes tight and his mouth goes dry, so here, he just focuses on prosthetics. Listens to Otto’s long monologues about the power of the brain, the mind, what the prosthetics will be like when they’re able to connect them to neural power. 

Here, strangely, he doesn’t feel like Peter Parker. He feels innocuous, background, elsewhere. Like all he is, all his past and present, can go black and white for a while. 

“We need to make sure the dampener doesn’t fail,” Otto says. 

“Lemme check on the power control,” Peter says, and gets to work.

~

Sometimes, Peter just likes to swing. Latching onto the tall buildings, soaring through the air, watching everyone on the ground see him, not see him, buy hot dogs at the corner carts, have loud cell phone calls that reach the rooftops, chase after cabs, feed pigeons. He looks and he listens and he feels the city shine, the deep age and history in every fleck of light, in every brick and cobblestone. He knows a lot of people don’t like it here—they think it’s too busy, too loud, but he loves it from all angles. He wants to keep it safe.

The sunset is bleeding a soft pink over the city, reflecting off windows and billboards. Peter swings up, races up the side of that big office-park building next to the East River, and skids to a halt on the roof, kicking up rocks. The building buzzes heavy from up here and it sounds like a swarm of bees, the air conditioning fans whipping around. Peter sits on the edge, swinging his legs and listening to the chorus of honking on the streets below. The headlights tracing newly washed concrete. The pink is fading to darkness, stars peeking out in the sky.

Peter can see The Raft from here. The helicopters circling around above it, and he thinks of Fisk. He averts his eyes, watches the ferries go by, lighting up the waters. 

“ _Text message from Tony_ ,” Karen says. “ _Would you like me to read it?_ ”

“Sure,” Peter says. 

She’s been doing this thing where she reads Tony’s texts in his voice, and sometimes it sounds spot-on and other times it sounds strangely robotic, reminding Peter of a horrible thing Tony once said. About putting his consciousness into an AI to stick around if he ever got killed. It’s sorta been haunting Peter ever since, though he wouldn’t let Tony know that.

“ _How long is Spidey’s shift tonight?_ ” Tony’s voice says, and this time it sounds spot-on.

Peter smiles, and from here he can see Avengers tower in the distance, the big red A like a beacon of hope above it all.

“Tell him I’ll head over there around seven,” Peter says. “I know how long it takes him to make any meal.”

“ _I’ll phrase it with your patented flair_ ,” Karen says.

“Thanks,” Peter says. “I believe in you.”

Peter gets up, starts pacing around the rooftop, and just when he’s debating on swinging over to the tower or taking the subway, he hears it. The noise would sound innocent to anyone else, something rattling, probably some drunk guy trying to get into his house without his keys. But Peter perches on the ledge and peers down, reminding himself where he is when he hears the sound again.

The half-finished construction site directly in front of him is one of those hideouts he took down and cleared out on his way to getting rid of Fisk. It was overrun with his thugs, dumb idiots with guns that were arguing about wrestling when Peter swung in and started webbing them up. The cops took out all the weapons they were hoarding, and watched the place for a while, but now the streets around it have gone dark. 

But Peter hears the rattling now, louder to him than anyone else around, and when he hones in on the planking and the scaffolding, he can see a beam of light coming from deep within the heart of the site.

Peter leaps down without thinking too much about it. He swings silently and he doesn’t really know what he’s gonna find, whether it’s someone off the street looking for a place to sleep, or one of Fisk’s thugs back to pick something up they left behind. He webs down from girder to girder, and the sound gets louder, and now it sounds like digging. Like metal hitting metal, and the beam of light whips up and slides right over him. He dodges around it but keeps diving down, and he can hear someone—no, two people, speaking what sounds like French.

“Karen,” Peter whispers. “Can you translate?”

“ _Sure thing_.”

Peter lands quietly despite the hard concrete, and drops back into the shadows. The right wall is unfinished, a tarp flapping in the wind and laid over bricks that are just a little taller than he is. There’s a drill close to him, a couple barrels, and an overturned table. There’s a makeshift office a couple feet away, made up by a tent and a few long pieces of lumber, and that’s where the two guys speaking French are…digging for something. 

He can hear them talking, but Karen talks over them in English.

“ _The materials should be right here_ ,” one of them says.

“ _Why do we even need this?_ ” the other asks. “ _We’ve got plenty._ ”

“ _Boss always wants more._ ”

Peter approaches slowly, and they both come into view. One is standing, pointing a flashlight down at the other, who is digging away at the floor. The one digging is holding his own flashlight, and it moves every time he does, shooting around all over the place. They’re both wearing suits, which is weird, and even though they’re facing away from him, Peter can tell that they’re wearing masks. 

“Hey, guys,” he says. “Pretty sure this apartment building isn’t open yet. The sign said spring 2020, but you know how New York is with their construction deadlines—”

The one standing turns around fast at the sound of his voice, and as soon as he draws his gun Peter shoots a barrage of webs at him, sticking him to the edge of the tent and array of planking. The one digging is a little faster and gets one shot off, but Peter twists out of the way, rolling into the tent and punching the guy in the stomach.

He couldn’t see the mask on the other one because it all happened so fast, but he can see this one clearly. It’s an elongated devil face, with sad, bulging yellow eyes, and a warped, disturbing looking smile. It only has about three teeth, all struck with decay, and the whole thing is topped off by two horns in the forehead. Peter is distracted by it enough that the guy gets a good hit in with the butt of his gun, and then he’s aiming it and Peter has to tackle him backwards, the tent collapsing in on them. 

Peter nearly topples into the hole the guy was making but he elbows him in the throat, grabbing the mask and snapping it back against the guy’s face. He grabs him, tries to knock the white tenting away and pull him back out into the main area, but when he does he nearly runs them both off the edge of the building and into the open air. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Peter says, elbowing the guy again, right in the nose of the ugly mask. “I’m usually working with complete buildings.”

The guy only yells, loud and ragged, and Peter grabs him by the shoulders before he can do anything else, tossing him up against the closest steel beam and webbing him to it so he sticks there. 

Peter takes a couple steps backwards, breathing hard, watching the guy struggle under the webbing. It’s darker now, the two flashlights laying abandoned on the ground and shooting in different directions, highlighting the dust and the ladder in the far corner. Peter hears the sirens coming and he sighs, hoping it’s someone he knows, and he jogs around to make sure the other guy is still webbed up after the tent collapse. 

He is, though he’s on the ground now, still moving and trying to get out of his predicament. Peter stares at that mask, the same as the other guy’s, and he shoots a couple more webs to make sure he isn’t gonna get up any time soon.

He sighs, swinging out from the halted construction and into the night air, vaulting down to the street behind this place where the red and blue lights are coming to a halt. He leaps down beside the car, brushing himself off. A tall, good-looking black man gets out of the driver’s side.

“Well, look who it is,” the cop says, closing his door and walking around the front of his car. “Never thought I’d actually meet you in person.”

“Oh, you’ve heard of me?” Peter asks, grinning, and then he realizes this guy can’t see him grinning because he’s wearing a mask. He rolls his eyes at himself.

“Yuri sings your praises to whoever’s willing to listen,” the cop says.

Yuri is Peter’s primary contact in the NYPD, one of the few cops that’ll give him the time of day. “Well, that’s nice to know,” Peter says. “I try to make friends. She likes to help out.”

“Oh, I think you’ve got a few friends in high places,” the cop says. He approaches, holding out his hand. “Jefferson Davis,” he says. “And you are?”

Peter shakes his hand and almost blurts out his name, before quickly correcting himself. “Uh, first name Spider, last name Man.”

Davis laughs. “Yeah, didn’t think I was gonna get anywhere with that,” he says, letting go of Peter’s hand. “My son’s a big fan of yours.”

“Oh, awesome,” Peter says. 

“What went down here?” Davis asks. “Heard a gunshot, got a couple reports.”

Peter looks up, watches as Karen scans the building and points out that it was the fifth floor where he encountered the guys in the masks. “Uh, I webbed up two guys up there—they were digging for something, and this used to be—”

“—a Fisk base, yeah,” Davis says, following Peter’s gaze. 

“They were wearing these, like…devil masks, and they were speaking French, and they had guns,” Peter says. “That’s all I got.” A message flashes on the screen.

_YEAH, I’M PRETTY PROUD OF THIS PESTO CHICKEN_  
_sorry, caps_

“Alright, I’ll take it from here,” Davis says. “I’ve got backup coming and they’re not the biggest Spiderman fans.”

“You sure?” Peter asks. “I could swing you up there, speed things up.”

“Nah, I don’t want your clearest memory of me to be me throwing up mid-flight,” Davis says, and Peter laughs, hearing another set of sirens coming this way.

“Alright,” he says. “Can you let me know what you find out? Yuri knows my number.”

“Sure,” Davis says, nodding. “Thanks for the good work, as always.”

“Ah, you don’t have to thank me,” Peter says. “It was fun! Not too much action around here since Fisk went away.” 

“That’s a good thing,” Davis says, winking at him. 

~

Peter runs up the side of the Avengers tower for the third time, reaching the top of the A before there’s a loud ding in his ears. He stops, his eyes narrowing, and he slides a little bit against the window. 

“Karen, what was that?” 

“ _That was me_ ,” Tony’s voice says. 

“Karen, are you reading a text?” Peter asks, wincing against a particularly bright spotlight coming from Session 73. 

“ _No, she’s not reading a text—what the hell are you doing? Why are you running up and down the building? Are you jumping off and taking selfies again?_ ”

Peter hums a little, looking at the phone he has stuck to his hand. “Maybe,” he says.

Tony groans. “ _Crazy person. Come inside when you’re done._ ”

“Did you like, hack my suit, to make that dinging noise?” Peter asks. “Are we on a phone call right now or are you like…possessing the suit?”

“ _Possessing—listen, I know it’s your suit but it’s also_ my _suit and I have my ways, okay, kid? Lemme stay somewhat mysterious._ ”

Peter snorts. “Okay, I’m gonna jump off one more time and then I’m coming inside.”

~

Tony was never particularly good at cooking or baking, but since hanging up the Iron Man mantle, he’s gotten a lot better at it. Steve took up painting, Tony took up cooking, and Peter always hears Tony on the phone catching Steve up with his current milestones and asking him about his own. Steve even sent Tony one of the paintings, which was of Avengers Tower at night. It was really nice, and Tony hung it up in the living room. He can’t exactly send Steve any of the food he makes, but he doesn’t let that stop him from sending videos and pictures.

This chicken pesto is definitely one to write to Steve about, and Peter cleans his plate within a couple minutes, like he hasn’t eaten in years. 

“How does it feel to be in the same room as a professional chef?” Tony asks, leaning back in his chair.

“I’ve got so many stars in my eyes I can’t even see,” Peter says, chewing his last bite. 

“Gotta bring some home to May tomorrow,” Tony says. “Guess she isn’t coming by?”

“Nah,” Peter says, leaning back too. “She called me on the way over here. She’s so busy there, but I guess it’s good.” He’s been trying not to think about it, but the masks those guys were wearing earlier keep presenting themselves in his head. He’s seen some creepy, horrible shit in his time as Spiderman, but for some reason, this is sticking with him. 

“What’s that face?” Tony asks, leaning his elbows on the table.

Peter clicks his tongue. “You remember how Fisk’s guys were holing up in those construction sites?” he asks. “Using them for cover?”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “I remember how you webbed about twelve of ‘em up on that crane, like a pretty thug Christmas tree.”

Peter laughs a little bit. “Well, I was around the one by the East River and I…heard these weird noises, so I dropped down in there to check it out, and there were these two…French guys wearing devil masks, and they were digging for something. I took ‘em down before I could find out what and this cop came and he was nice, but now I just…well, I wish I had stayed to find out what they were doing. And I can’t stop thinking about the masks.”

“Creepy looking?” Tony asks, grimacing a little bit.

“Yeah,” Peter says. “They were both wearing suits and the same mask and it almost looked like…a uniform. I don’t know.” He sighs. “I just hope they’re not some new gang that’s trying to take hold now that Fisk is gone.”

Tony looks at him for a couple long moments, and then he cracks his jaw. “Well, we’ll keep an eye on it, get ready if we see anything similar going on. I bet the cops’ll keep you in the loop, that Yuri likes you even if she makes fun of you all the time.” He taps his hand on the table. “Actually, this is interesting timing—I was working on some new webshooters and gadgets for you. Might come in handy if anything goes on with these devil guys.”

“You’ve made _more_ webshooters?” Peter asks. “I already have a million billion combinations.”

“You—are the worst exaggerator,” Tony says, getting up, grabbing his cane from its spot leaning against the table. “C’mon, lemme show you.”

~

Peter suits up again, and stands in the middle of the workout room while Tony pairs with the suit and uploads all his new data. Peter swings his arms back and forth and can’t help being excited at the prospect of new moves. 

“You’re on the up and up with your web fluid, right?” Tony asks, from behind his tablet. 

“Yup, refilled today,” Peter says.

“Okay, we’ll go back to a hundred after this training sesh,” Tony says.

“Oh, is this a training session?” Peter asks. 

“Not an official one,” Tony says. 

Peter feels a pulse running through the suit, once, twice and then again. 

“Alright,” Tony says, putting the tablet down and grabbing his cane, hobbling over to where Peter is standing in the middle of the mat. A set of dummies come down from the ceiling, and Peter recognizes them as the ones he vandalized the last time he was in this room. He snorts when he sees his Sharpie work, the villainous mustaches and angry eyebrows. 

Tony rolls his eyes at him. “Okay, first, you’ve got three nanotech drones. Just gotta deploy by saying ‘go drone’ and all three of ‘em will come out.”

“Go drone!” Peter says, probably too excitedly. 

Three drones come out of where droney normally lives, and when they fully formed they’re a little bit bigger than droney is, but the same design, little floating spiders. They approach the dummies menacingly, and then they deliver a shock of electricity each to the dummies, making Peter jump. They return to him fast, going back inside the chest spider like they were never there to begin with.

Tony is grinning. “Those little guys can deliver a jolt of electricity, about half a bolt of lightning each. Each one could probably run a small house. They target enemies based on your emotions, so don’t call out your drones when you’re having a fight with Ned. Or, God forbid, me.”

“Okay,” Peter laughs. 

“And going off the electricity theme, open up your web wheel there.”

“Karen—” Peter starts.

“ _On it_ ,” she says. The web list floats out on his screens, spanning long and bright. 

“Select electric webs,” Tony says.

“Electric webs,” Peter says. He looks down at his webshooters, looks at Tony, who nods at him. He aims at the dummies and shoots a web, and as soon as it hits the one in the middle electricity takes over the whole body. But then it shoots out, travels to the dummies on either side of it, making them shake and tumble over.

“What I like about those is that the electricity can travel,” Tony says. “Usually about six feet on either side, but I’m working on that. But if you’re facing a bunch of dickheads at once, this could be good crowd control.”

“Nice,” Peter says, and he hops up and down a few times out of pure excitement. Tony laughs at him, and looks back towards the dummies. “Alrighty, and _speaking_ of crowd control…Fri, can we get like, I don’t know…three more dummies, and then switch them all to running mode. But, like, the run in slow motion business, like in the movies.”

“ _Yes, Boss_ ,” Friday’s voice says, from above. 

“Tony, you didn’t have to do all this,” Peter says, as the ceiling opens up again.

Tony scoffs at him. “This is a lot more fun than the business aspect of SI, which I’ve had to be a lot more involved in since I stopped…you know.” He clears his throat. “Alright, select web bomb.”

“Web bomb—web bomb?” Peter asks, looking back and forth between Tony and the dummies. 

“Yup,” Tony says. “Similar to your web grenade, but more powerful. Okay, Fri. Let’s make that movie magic.”

The dummies all start running in slow motion, and it’s super creepy, kind of reminds Peter of I, Robot or something. He aims and shoots both web shooters, and the long line of webbing cascades through the air and explodes into big, separate webs, wrapping up all but one dummy. They stop running, and start struggling there on their feet.

“Wow,” Peter says. 

“Now, I like that one a lot,” Tony says. “You can really take the hurting to ‘em when they’re like that, but they’re still mobile, even if they can’t use their arms, right?”

“Yeah,” Peter says. 

“I know you need to use like, five or six shots of web to get a guy to stick to a surface, which is kind of a waste to me. You know I’m all about making resources last. So select impact web.”

Peter watches as Karen scrolls down the long list, and highlights impact web. “Okay, got it,” he says.

“Get that last guy over there before he reaches us,” Tony says, pointing at the last dummy that’s still running in slow motion. “I think we’ve got at least five minutes, but I’m not a patient person.”

Peter snorts, aims at it, and shoots. This web comes out a lot faster than the others, grabs the dummy, and slaps him up against the adjacent wall in a perfect web that covers his whole body.

“Oh my god,” Peter says. “That’s perfect. That’s…I love that.”

“Good,” Tony says. “That shit will keep the baddies in one spot for at least three hours, unless someone takes some industrial tools to it.”

Peter pulls off his mask and beams at Tony. He feels a little overwhelmed and he shakes his head, stumbling over and hugging him, trying not to knock him over. 

“Thank you,” Peter mutters, against Tony’s shoulder.

“It’s no problem, buddy,” Tony says, patting his back. He hugs him for a couple moments longer and then he pulls away, his free hand on Peter’s shoulder. “And listen…devil mask dudes, whatever it is, whatever it winds up being…I’ve got all my faith in you, because you’re capable of anything. Spiderman knows New York like the back of his hand. And so does Peter Parker.”

Peter smiles, trying to stop his eyes from welling up. “Yeah,” he says. “I hope so.”


	3. don't touch the art

Peter watches Ned yawn for the third time in ten minutes. The train isn’t busy, it was before 77th but most people got off there—despite all the new space, Peter and Ned stay half shoved together in the far corner of the car. Peter wonders if it’s just muscle memory, preparing for another crowd at the next stop, or if it’s because Ned wants to use him as a pillow.

“Are you tired?” Peter asks. “Am I boring you?”

Ned sits up a little straighter, wiping his eyes and smiling sleepily. “Nope. No sir. Not at all.”

“I thought you were my point man on this,” Peter says, squeezing his backpack between his feet. “Sidekick, if you will. Undercover mission. Reverse undercover, in my case.”

“I am,” Ned says, nodding dramatically. “I am pumped for sitting in a boring auction house for three hours.” He yawns again, eyeing Peter as he does it. “Why can’t you bring me on the exciting missions? Fisk doesn’t even have good taste in art.”

Peter sighs. They’re auctioning off Fisk’s assets today to all the rich and famous that want to have a slice of the kingpin, and Peter figured he’d go and check it out, see if anything went down. He doesn’t exactly expect it to, but something in his gut is pulling him here, an anxious tug that twists inside him whenever he remembers those devil masks. Yuri got back to him and said they didn’t find much at the construction site, spare parts, old weaponry, none of it sounded too exciting. But even if it doesn’t seem like something is happening on the surface, Peter has a feeling. And he’s learned to trust himself. 

“I’m never bringing you somewhere genuinely dangerous,” Peter says, as the train comes to a halt and a couple people get on, their grocery bags rustling. “I doubt anything’s gonna happen here, but I just wanna see who shows up, where things go, if anyone’s acting shifty.”

_STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS, PLEASE_

“Everybody’s gonna be acting shifty,” Ned says, as the train keeps going again. “That’s just how rich people are.”

“I’m telling Tony.”

Ned groans. “He’s a special kind of rich person.”

Peter watches the list of stops flashing on the screen, and theirs is two away. “You should be excited. You love when those auction dudes talk really fast.”

“You’re right,” Ned says. “That is so weird.”

“So stop falling asleep, bozo,” Peter says, nudging into him.

“I will only stay awake if you bid on something,” Ned says. 

Peter scoffs. “What if I get stuck with it? I don’t have enough money to buy cereal.”

“You’ve got Tony. And I need Wilson Fisk’s ceramic cat,” Ned says. “These are the rules.”

“Alright, I’ll bid if there’s a ceramic cat,” Peter says. “And only if there’s a ceramic cat.”

~

Rosemann’s is overrun when they get there, people forming a crowd up the main stairs and nearly clogging the street in front of the building. Peter thinks it looks like a good setup for a few police cars, but there aren’t any flashing lights in sight. Somehow, he has a feeling Fisk still has a hand in things despite his new orange attire, which would explain the lack of cops.

There are two well-dressed women standing in the main doorway, looking down at the roaring crowd. “We’re full up!” one of them yells.

“At capacity!” the other says. They look happy about this.

Peter doesn’t know if all these people are here trying to get in, or if they’re protesting, trying to show their continued disdain for Fisk even though he’s behind bars. There are no signs sticking up into the air, and he can’t hear any chants making waves. People were always affected by Fisk, in one way or another, and they must feel strangely untethered now that he’s gone.

“How the hell are we gonna get in there?” Ned asks. “No way we’re gonna get through all those people, and even if we do, they’re not gonna let us in.”

“I thought this might happen,” Peter says. He knocks Ned in the arm. “I totally planned for this. C’mon.” 

He tugs him into the alleyway beside the building, the clamoring growing distant as they rush around the back. 

“How the hell are we gonna get into some weirdo back entrance?” Ned asks, close behind him, their feet splashing in the puddles the rain left behind. “There’s gotta be guards…guarding everything.”

“Yeah, so it’s super cool I hacked into their security system,” Peter says. The auction house is big and cathedral-like, and it isn’t surrounded by a fence because that would ruin the aesthetic. 

“What?” Ned asks. “Cool! Did Tony help you with that?”

“I can do some things on my own, you know,” Peter says, as they rustle through rose bushes. “But yes, he did. A little.”

Ned huffs. 

They’re walking low and bent over, like that’s gonna stop them from being seen, and there’s another party down the street, the beats of some bass-filled song punching out into the air. Peter can hear people talking the next block over, and he listens to make sure they aren’t running into a trap here. He doesn’t hear anything too suspect, so he weaves through the foliage and scoots in closer to the building, rounding the corner into the back lot. There are a couple trucks sitting back here in the light of the two street lamps, a stray cat that rushes away at the sight of Peter and Ned coming. 

There’s one set of stairs leading up to a doorway, a bit away from a ramp that twists around the far end of the building, where there are three large garage-like doors. There are two sash windows on either side of the door in front of them, and Peter can see the crowd moving around, and one stagnant guard poised by his post. 

They hunch down by the stairs and Peter pulls his phone out of his pocket, opening up the app and checking into the system. 

“What are you gonna do?” Ned asks. “You can’t set off any alarms or they’ll shut the whole thing down.”

“I’m just gonna cause some movement in an area where there shouldn’t be any movement right now,” Peter says. He’s got visuals of all the security cameras in the building, and can see how many people are here, moving in swift, clear 1080p. Peter definitely can do things on his own, but Tony always makes them better. Maybe one day he’ll pass on the nuance of the upgrade.

Peter targets one of the back rooms where Fisk’s belongings are being kept, gets a night-vision image. Everything looks clear, and he sends out a pulse through the camera the way Tony showed him. He looks up at the window, watches the guy look down at his watch. Then he’s talking to somebody on his ear piece, looking concerned—and then he disappears. 

“Oh, wow—”

“Okay, let’s go!” Peter says.

They both rush up the stairs and Peter grabs the door handle, quickly unlocking it with the app so they can slip inside.

There are so many people in the hallway that no one is really paying attention, and they move inside quickly and quietly, closing the door behind them. Peter closes the app and puts his phone away, grabbing Ned’s wrist and tugging him forward so they can blend into the crowd.

“Nice,” Ned says, laughing a little bit as they shoulder around a woman in a red dress. It’s a strange divide in here based on how people are dressed—there are some that look like they’re going to a grand ball, and others that look like they’re going to their little brother’s baseball game. That’s what they get for keeping this thing open to the public. Peter’s glad their glitz and glamor will be tainted by the people Fisk liked to keep under his thumb, hopefully putting their thumbs all over his bullshit seized assets. 

“Do you know where to go?” Ned asks. “I know you sent me those blueprints, I totally know you did—”

“So much for guy in the chair,” Peter mutters, as they approach the end of the hallway. He adjusts his backpack strap over his shoulder.

“I’m out of the chair,” Ned says. “I am in the _field_.”

They approach the main atrium that branches off into three different hallways on each side, like a sun and its beams. Some of Fisk’s lower level items are on display here, under glass cases. It’s pretty much wall to wall with people, and Peter thinks if they keep pushing through they might be able to grab a seat in the auction room before all these people get in there, unless all the seats are already taken. He wonders why he’s become eternally late recently, and he hopes he’s not when it counts.

“See any ceramic cats?” Ned asks, as they push their way into the center of the room. The chandelier above them is reflecting off every light in the room, and Peter figures this Persian rug they’re walking on is more expensive than his whole apartment. 

“No such luck,” Peter says. They approach the case closest to them, and it’s just an old looking violin, labeled as belonging to Claude Lebet. Peter scoffs, exchanges an incredulous look with a stranger, and moves to the next one.

“Do you even know who Claude Lebet is?” Ned whispers. 

“No,” Peter says back. “But, like—why would Fisk have his violin? Lies. Deceit.”

“Yeah….what a liar,” Ned says.

There’s all kinds of bullshit in this room. Ugly paintings, supposedly Egyptian vases, earrings that he claims belonged to Queen Anne. Old Chinese war masks, a 14th century Japanese katana, a gold clock from Paris during the French Revolution. A lot of things, if they’re genuine, that didn’t deserve to be in Fisk’s possession in the first place.

“Oh, that’s the closest thing we’re gonna get to a ceramic cat, I think,” Ned says, pointing at something close to the hallway leading to the auction room. They walk over to it and Peter sees a small, bronze French bulldog sculpture, it’s little hind legs in the air.

“That’s way too cute for Fisk to have ever owned,” Peter says.

“For real.”

Peter sighs. “Let’s head into the auction room, hopefully we can find a spot.”

They head that way, edging around groups of people, and Peter makes note of where the bathroom is. They finally arrive at the wide open double doors. Peter rushes inside and surprisingly, there aren’t as many people in here as there are outside. It kind of looks like a room set up for a wedding, a long main aisle and a bunch of wooden chairs on either side of it, except there’s a stage at the end of the aisle instead of a wedding arch. 

“There are a couple seats,” Ned says, pointing, and Peter heads that way. 

He nearly gets the shock of his life when he looks up and sees Officer Davis sitting at the end of the row behind the two empty chairs.

Peter meets a lot of people as Spiderman, and sometimes his mind can’t separate himself from…well, himself, and he nearly approaches people that wouldn’t otherwise know who he is. Davis looks at him, narrows his eyes, and Peter tries to fix his face because he knows he’s looking at him like a lunatic. 

“What’s wrong?” Ned asks, as they sit down. 

“Nothing,” Peter says, putting his backpack down between his feet. He grabs his phone out of his pocket and quickly types out a note, holding it low and getting Ned’s attention. 

_The cop I met the other night is right behind us :O_

Ned reads it silently, then meets Peter’s gaze. “Well, I guess we’re safe, then,” he says, smiling. 

“Or maybe he has a feeling too,” Peter whispers, widening his eyes.

Ned looks over his shoulder as blatantly as one can, and he turns back around slowly, leaning in Peter’s direction. “I’m pretty sure that guy’s son goes to our school.”

“How do you know?” Peter asks.

“Think he’s a new freshman,” Ned says. “Saw the kid’s mom and dad dropping him off on the first day when you were late rescuing that cat from the tree or whatever. Flash was making a big deal that the dad was a cop.”

“What’s the kid’s name?” Peter whispers.

Ned looks down at Peter’s phone, types to tap.

_MILES_

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice from above says. “The auction will be starting shortly, in the gold room.”

Ned sighs, looking around. “I hope something exciting happens.”

~

Nothing exciting happens. The auction has been going on for half an hour now, and all that’s happened has been a lot of overpaying for the gross art that Fisk was apparently hoarding, since there’s so much of it. Peter keeps stealing looks at Ned, watches him yawn like he was doing on the train. He’s doing that swaying thing he does, a little bit side to side as he trails closer to sleep, and Peter is disappointed that not even the fast-talking auctioneer can keep his friend awake.

“Ned,” he says. “They just sold the ceramic cat.”

“Liar,” Ned says, his eyes still closed. “Some douchebag just paid 2.5 million for a ceremonial mongoose statue. I’m paying attention.”

Peter snorts. He tries to nonchalantly look over his shoulder to see if Officer Davis is still there, but his chair is empty, and this woman in a beige trench coat quickly sits there, glaring at him for looking at her. Peter turns back around, looking up at the stage, and that’s when he feels it. That tug in his gut, paired with his spidey sense going off just a little, and then a whole lot. The burning behind his eyes, the tension in his neck, his jaw locking and a chill running up and down his arms. He tries to stay calm, looking around the room to make sure nothing serious has changed, and he doesn’t see anything. All the security guards are standing in their corners of the room, the next item is being displayed—some weird self portrait of a guy in a beret.

Peter worries he might be freaking out because Davis is gone. He doesn’t know why that’d be true, but he can admit he’s felt slightly off his game since the whole Fisk thing. Having a cop there felt a bit like having backup. He sighs. He squeezes his backpack between his feet, reminding himself that he has his suit with him, he has all the new webshooters and gadgets Tony gave him, so he is safe, if he needs to be.

“What’s going on?” Ned asks. “You good? Looking shifty.”

“Not sure,” Peter whispers. He looks around at the guards again. They almost look like statues, unbothered. 

Peter cracks his jaw and pulls his phone out again, opening up the app of the security cameras. 

He sees it immediately.

Movement, in the back rooms. Lots and lots of movement. His heart beats wildly in his ears and he clicks on one of the cameras, zooming in. There are at least four guys in this room, and they’re all wearing suits and…and masks. Devil masks. They’re grabbing up boxes, quickly rushing them out of the room. Peter clicks over to another camera, and sees the same thing. 

The guard at the door earlier rushed away at his simple little pulse going off in the container room. And now…now they’re doing nothing. 

“Ned, you gotta go,” Peter whispers. 

“What?” Ned asks, whipping his head around. “What? Why?”

“Because, you gotta go, get out of here, get as far away as you can, just get somewhere safe.” He looks down at his phone, sees that the devil guys are targeting three different rooms. He looks up at Ned again. “Something’s going on and I don’t know what’s gonna happen and I don’t wanna worry about you getting hurt. You gotta trust me.” He says it all in a hushed, quick tone, faster than the auctioneer, and Ned huffs, nodding.

“Fine, fine,” Ned says. “I’ll go to the library. But what about everybody else?”

“I’ll figure it out,” Peter says, intending to keep any kind of fight away from the general public.

Ned looks at him for a second, and then he gets up, swiftly moving down the aisle and out of the room. Peter waits a second, chewing on the inside of his cheek, and counts to thirty. Then he grabs his backpack and gets out of his seat as the next item is being brought onto the stage, and he tries to leave as calmly as possible, not making eye contact with anybody. He knows he’s really shitty under pressure when he’s not wearing the suit, and he doesn’t wanna look at anybody wrong and cause suspicion. He tries his hardest not to look at the guard at the door, considering he knows something is off with all the guards now, since they’re letting whatever heist go down without a hitch. 

He turns into the hallway and makes a beeline for the bathroom, knocking the door open and checking to make sure nobody else is in there. He’s alone, thank God, and he tumbles into the handicapped stall and quickly starts pulling his clothes off. 

Once he’s in the suit he dumps his backpack out the small rectangular window at the top of the wall. He’s learned not to put anything else important where he stores his suit, and he’ll check back tomorrow to see if it’s still there. It wouldn’t be the biggest loss.

He rushes out of the stall and tries to slow down as he pushes the main door back open a crack. He knows there are a lot of people here, and he’s gonna be seen real fast if he doesn’t find a way into the back hallways where the heist is happening. 

“Karen,” he whispers, looking back and forth in the empty hallway best as he can. “Can I get the layout of this place? I pretty much know where everything is but I need the stealthiest way to get to where the bad guys are, and visuals help.”

“ _Here we go_ ,” Karen says, and a map of the building comes up on his screen. Karen lays out a red line for him, leading him to the back rooms. “ _I’ve highlighted enemies in yellow, and I’ll alert if they’re coming closer._ ”

“Thanks! And if they catch me, I can just….knock ‘em out,” Peter says. “Perfect.” He takes a big breath and starts into the hallway, looking over his shoulder when he hears distant conversation. He walks normally until he gets up to the auction room doors, and then he climbs up the wall and on the ceiling to get around it. He jumps down when he’s in the clear, trying to be light on his feet as he approaches the turn.

“ _Peter—_ ” Karen starts, but he sees what she was alerting him to as soon as he’s in the next hallway.

“Spiderman,” Davis says, his hand on his holstered gun. “Jesus, wasn’t expecting—you think something’s going on here too?”

“Know it is,” Peter says, trying to stop his heart from bursting in shock. He’s glad to see him, but he definitely doesn’t want him to get hurt. “And it’ll probably be dangerous, so you should—”

“Nope, not going anywhere, so don’t try it,” Davis says, shaking his head. “I had a feeling about this shit, after what you saw at the construction site, and I’m wearing a vest,” he says, patting his chest. “What do you know?”

Peter sighs, that familiar fear making his throat go tight. “Let’s walk and talk, but stay low.”

Davis nods and Peter keeps going, watching the path Karen laid out for him. She puts up the security cameras too, and the Devils are still working, loading up everything they can get their hands on.

“Those Devil guys are here,” Peter says, keeping close to the wall as he heads towards the back, on the farther side of the building from where they snuck in. “They’re stealing from the back, looks like they’re taking Fisk’s stuff, and all the guards in the auction room know about it and aren’t putting a stop to it.”

“Christ, they’re all compromised?” Davis asks.

“Or supremely unconcerned,” Peter says. 

“What would they want with all this garbage?” Davis asks. 

Peter watches as two yellow figures turn into the hallway adjacent to them, and he reaches back, making Davis stop. Two guards come walking out, and this time, they’re holding assault weapons. Peter sucks in a breath, chooses impact webs. He aims at one, shoots, then aims at the other. They’re both grabbed and promptly webbed to the walls, and they aren’t making any noise at all. The guns are laying on the ground and Peter quickly switches back to normal webs, shooting them a couple times so they’ll be useless to anyone that finds them.

“Jesus,” Davis says, looking him up and down. “You’re full of surprises.”

“Got a couple upgrades,” Peter says. He looks at the map, doesn’t see any more stragglers, and they keep on. “Just a little bit further,” he says. “You sure you’re—”

“I’m ready,” Davis says. “I’ve got your six.”

They keep following the path Karen laid out, and they turn into another hallway, and then carefully open a door, leading into what looks like a small, well-maintained warehouse. There are carefully labeled boxes filling the place up, all cordoned-off and kept together. But off to the left there’s three doors, and from the layout of the building that’s where the dickhead Devil guys are pulling their shit. 

“Okay,” Peter says, checking the security cameras to make sure they’re still at it, and they are, though it looks like they’re almost done. “We gotta be fast, and they’re in all three rooms. Each room has an outside exit like a garage door. Can I take the first one—”

“—and I’ll take the second,” Davis says. “We can go fast, meet up for the third?”

“Same brain,” Peter says. “Okay, see you in a second,” he says.

He turns fast, rushing into the first door, mowing it right down so it slams into the ground. He rolls until he’s standing again, and he’s in the small room he’s gotten so familiar with on the security camera. The big garage door is open, and he can see one of the trucks that was sitting out there earlier, except its back is open now, full of stolen goods. He’s surrounded by four Devils, all still masked and holding various items, which they instantly start dropping as they reach for their weapons.

“Hey guys,” Peter says, dodging when one gets off a shot, aiming an impact web in his direction. “The party’s a few doors down, are you lost?”

They all start yelling demands at him, at each other in French, and Peter figures he can end this fast so he can go help Davis. “Web blossom,” he says, jumping into the air. This one he worked out with Tony way before the whole Fisk business, mostly because Tony thought it would be funny. The webs come out fast and rabid as Peter does a quick spin, making himself dizzy, and when he touches back down everybody in the room is wrapped up, and so are most of the items and walls. He throws some quick punches, some well-placed kicks, and then the devils are all down for the count. He can hear some commotion through the open garage door and he moves fast, swinging around to where Davis is.

He’s already got three out of four on the ground and he’s brawling it out with the fourth one, the two of them knocking wooden boxes back and forth at their feet. 

“Head to the third room!” Davis yells, throwing another punch and knocking the devil backwards. “I’ll finish up here!”

“Got it!” Peter yells.

But he can hear the tires squealing before he even takes two steps back out, and he can see one of the trucks speeding away, whipping around the corner and nearly taking out a group of people on the side of the road.

“Oh my God!” 

“Go after them!” Davis yells, still holding the devil off. “I’ll catch up, I’ve got my patrol car!”

“Alright!” Peter yells, shooting a web into the air, catching onto the closest looming red oak tree outside. He keeps his eye on the truck as he swings after it, watching it wreak havoc, skimming sides of buildings, nailing outside restaurant patios, speeding through red lights and knocking other cars out of the way. Peter curses to himself and swings lower—he needs to catch it, he needs to stop this before it gets worse. He turns when it does, and it drives up onto the sidewalk, slamming into mailbox after mailbox, weaving around the trunk of a big tree that would have stopped it in its tracks.

“Goddamnit,” Peter curses, watching people skitter away, out of the line of fire.

“ _Peter_ ,” Karen says. “ _I am scanning the contents of the truck, and it seems they were also loading weaponry from Fisk’s armory. Some of it was hidden inside the statues and behind the art frames._ ”

“Wow,” Peter says, swinging around a corner as the truck takes a back alleyway. “Okay, that makes a little more sense.”

The truck clips a lamppost and veers out into the next street, and Peter thinks they’re driving like he did the first time he stole Flash’s car. He sighs to himself, tries to speed up, because there’s a goddamn traffic jam ahead and he can just see this idiot slamming through all the cars waiting there.

He sees an opening, shoots a web and pulls himself down on top of the truck, landing with a heavy thud. Immediately, someone inside starts shooting through the roof and he dodges away, going for the driver first. 

“Sir, I need to see your license and registration,” he says, leaning far over on the left side. He shoots a web grenade through the window, webbing both driver and passenger up, and then he grabs the driver, tossing him out. The truck starts to go crazy and Peter knows he doesn’t have much time. He straightens back up on the roof, sees they’re careening towards the traffic, and he shoots webs at the nearest buildings on either side of them, pulling hard, hard as he can, to make the truck screech to a halt. It nearly topples over but it stays upright, stopping haphazard in the middle of the street. Peter jumps down, ripping the door off the passenger side and shooting an impact web at the devil still sitting there, just in case.

His spidey sense goes off and he hears a gunshot, and he quickly dodges, a sharp pain blooming in his side. He glances down, sees the tear in his suit, a streak of blood. “Shit,” he mutters.

“ _You’ve been hit, Peter_ ,” Karen says.

“Grazed, definitely,” Peter says. “It’s fine. Fine!”

He turns and dodges away again before he can get shot again, but then the last devil is launching himself at him, and he’s wearing some kind of thing on his hand—Peter blocks a punch by grabbing it and he’s instantly electrified, a surge of jagged energy rushing through his body. He gasps, stumbling away, but the guy pursues him relentlessly. This guy is bigger, more substantial than the others, broad-shouldered and heavy, coming at him like a bull. That mask. That mask. Peter grabs it, rips it off, but instead of some demon under there, it’s just some stupid white guy with blond hair. He curses in French and Peter punches him in the face. 

The guy comes back with three more punches, all strung out with electricity, and Peter feels dizzy for a second, thoughts of the fight with Fisk presenting themselves in his mind. He tries to shoot a web but the guy pins his wrist to the concrete, head-butting him. Peter knees him in the junk and he falls forward, and then Peter sees Davis in a flash, holding a pipe, and he hits the guy hard on the back of the head. He falls in a heap on top of Peter, like a ton of bricks, and Davis knocks him off. 

“Jesus,” Peter breathes. “Thanks.”

“Sorry I was late,” Davis says, holding out his hand, pulling Peter to his feet. His squad car is cutting off the street behind them, the lights blinking against the brick apartment buildings. “You okay?” 

“Yeah,” Peter says, not saying anything about the gunshot wound. It’s definitely just a scratch, he thinks it just skimmed him. “You?”

“I’m A-Okay,” Davis says. “Love a good dust up.”

They both seem to have the same idea at the same time, and they walk over to the back of the truck. The door is open from where the last guy got out, and there are assault weapons everywhere. “So they were definitely smuggling guns out of there in the auction items,” Peter says. 

“Yeah,” Davis says. “And something else. That I conveniently found when I landed on top of one of the statues and destroyed it.”

“Hmm?” 

Karen starts scanning the boxes, all topsy-turvy, turned over and broken open. 

“Oh,” Peter says, noticing the new substances Karen is pointing out. “Jesus, were they trying to make a bomb?”

“Looks like it,” Davis says, pulling one of the boxes forward with a few smaller Buddha statues in it. Lots of materials Peter is familiar with are stowed in there, reminding him of the Central Park bullshit he had to deal with last summer, when he first met Yuri. “All the makings of possible pipe bombs.”

Another siren approaches at the end of the street, and then Peter sees flashes out of the corner of his eye. They both turn and see that a crowd has gathered at the corner of the street, all of them muttering to each other, taking pictures. Peter winces a little bit, presses his hand to his side, and then he hears more and more cop cars coming. 

“I’m gonna split,” Peter says, almost hearing Tony’s voice yelling at him about the gunshot wound. “Can you—”

“I’ll get Yuri to send you all the files,” Davis says, and he grabs Peter’s hand, shaking it. “This was your case as much as it was mine. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Well, you had my six,” Peter says, and Davis smiles. 

“Yeah,” Davis says. “And I always will.”

“Thanks, man,” Peter says. He nods at him one more time, hears more pictures snapping and sirens incoming, and he shoots a web, swinging into the starlight.

~

“I am going to make a flipbook of you in the goddamn med bay,” Tony says, pressing a bandage over the wound in Peter’s side. “Blur out your face, sell it for public awareness. Put the money towards your college fund.”

“The bullet just _skimmed_ me,” Peter says, looking up at May’s face. 

“Thank God,” she says. 

“Done,” Tony says, with a huff. He shakes his head. “Should heal fine. Does it hurt?”

It stings a little, but he doesn’t think it’s worth mentioning. “Feels better now,” he says. “Thanks, Tony.”

“Mhm.”

“Make sure Bruce knows I didn’t break my arm again,” Peter says. “I feel like this is a new dawn, a new day.”

“Alright Nina Simone,” Tony says. “I’ll be sure to let him know you’ve moved on to bullet wounds.”

May throws a shirt at him and Peter gingerly pulls it on, lets Tony help him off the bed. 

“You sure you’re okay?” May asks. “That electricity glove or whatever it was you said…doesn’t sound good.”

“I’m fine,” Peter says. “Let’s go eat, what I really am is hungry.”

He texts Ned as they head down to the living room, gets a barrage of news articles in return about what happened at the auction house. Then, he eventually tells Peter that he’s still at the library and he’s totally fine. 

Tony made meatloaf and Peter never really liked meatloaf, but it’s one of the best things he’s ever eaten and it almost makes him forget about all the devil bullshit that happened tonight. Both Tony and May are staring at the news coverage on the big screen TV, and it’s kinda strange to see it from this angle.

“They’re giving the cop all the goddamn credit,” Tony says. “Like Spiderman wasn’t even there.”

“He’s a good guy,” Peter says, taking a sip of his Coke.

“Yeah, you’re a good guy too,” Tony says. “He could be the best cop in the world but he’s still not capable of what you are, especially in a fight like this.”

“He saved me, though,” Peter says. “That guy was getting the upper hand on me.”

“You both deserve credit,” May says. “And they aren’t really…giving you what you deserve. You should hear J. Jonah Jameson, Jesus Christ.”

“Not that imbecile,” Tony says. “All he does is spew bullshit.”

May huffs a little bit, and she opens something on her phone. Then Jonah’s overbearing voice is filling the room. His radio show is made to almost exclusively bash Spiderman, and it’s like he thinks Peter is some kind of escaped convict from Ryker’s that costumes up specifically to trick people into thinking he’s good.

“ _How can you try to compare a reckless vigilante to one of New York’s finest?_ ” Jonah asks. “ _Spiderman is inconsistent, he never—_ ”

“ _No_ ,” a familiar female voice says. “ _You have no idea about any of Spiderman’s ideals, he is constantly taking care of crime in the city that he doesn’t inform the news about, because he doesn’t do it for attention, Mr. Jameson. He does it because it’s the right thing to do. And Officer Davis has already said they couldn’t have stopped this tonight if it wasn’t for Spiderman._ ”

“That…” Tony says, grinning, “is Pepper. She must have called in to bitch at him.”

Peter snorts. “Oh yeah.”

“No wonder she’s not down here yet,” Tony says, looking up at the ceiling fondly.

“I guess she heard him when she was in the shower,” May says, laughing.

“Love her,” Tony says, still beaming. 

May turns it off, stretching her arms out in front of her. “Linard was acting strangely when I wanted to leave,” she says. “He was acting particularly nervous about everything when he saw the news. I think he probably lives in that area.”

“That’s the snobby rich guy, right?” Tony asks, giving Peter a look.

“He’s not snobby,” May says, laughing a little bit. “I just never would have imagined this guy, if I didn’t know anything about him, opening up a homeless shelter. He just _looks_ rich and snobby, but he’s not, he’s…he’s concerned about the homeless problem and wants to try and make an impact. But now he’s going on an extended vacation, so I’m gonna have more on my plate for a little bit here.”

“I’ll try to find some interns to send over there,” Tony says. “Since I’m so rich, I need to go against character, you know. Show my compassionate side.”

May snorts. “You are the worst.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“And one of the most compassionate men I’ve ever met,” May says, taking another bite of her meatloaf. “ _And_ a particularly good chef.”

“That’s what I wanna hear,” Tony says.

“It’s true,” Peter says. “This is great.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Tony says, looking over at him. He analyzes him for a second, concern in his brow. “You sure you’re alright?”

“Yup,” Peter says, thinking about the possible bombs, the guns, the electricity surging through his body. What could have happened if Davis didn’t knock that guy out. He watches the pandemonium on the TV, watches those compromised guards being lead out of Rosemann’s, watches all the cops swarming the place. That familiar feeling twists in his gut, the one of fear and anticipation of a rising movement that he isn’t sure he can handle. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m fine.”


	4. into the fire

Peter makes it his personal goal to put a stop to the Devils. He has Karen track the masks, and for the next couple days he periodically takes them down. Keeps them from stealing from Fisk’s penthouse, keeps them from selling previously stolen goods, he even stops them from killing some of Fisk’s men, who Peter finds holed up at an abandoned warehouse on 10th street. He takes out the Devils, with no thanks from the straggly Fisk guys he saved from certain death. So he webs them up too, for the lack of gratitude.

The police load the Fisk guys into one truck and the Devils into another, webbing still clinging to them in sticky heaps. Peter yawns behind the mask, perched on a nearby light post and watching Yuri work. He likes her no-nonsense attitude, the way she bosses everybody around, the way he isn’t one of those people because she actually trusts him. He feels like he really accomplished something getting her on his side.

“ _Translating_ ,” Karen says.

“Translating?” Peter asks, looking around. “Translating what?”

“ _Listen, Peter_ ,” Karen says. 

Peter does, honing in past Yuri giving the uniformed cops shit, and hears the two Devils whispering in French. Karen quickly translates. 

“ _It doesn’t matter. The job will be done._ ”

“ _Do we know if he’s secured the Devil’s Breath?_ ”

“ _We can only pray. But the next part of the plan is in motion. We will succeed even if we aren’t present._ ”

“Devil’s Breath,” Peter whispers to himself, as the truck starts to drive away and the Devils’ voices fade. “What the hell is that?” He clears his throat, jumping down and nearly knocking a trash can over. “Uh, thanks for listening, Karen.”

“ _I know you admire Captain Watanable, Peter,_ ” Karen says. 

“She reminds me of May,” Peter says, walking over to her. “They’d totally be friends.”

“Who would be friends?” Yuri asks, scowling as the two uniformed officers get into the other truck containing the Fisk guys.

“Nobody,” Peter says. “Those two French guys, they were talking about something called Devil’s Breath. You think it’s something? Other than their own bad breath, I mean. I don’t know why they’d be talking about that.”

She smiles at him. “I’ll have to look into it. Could be code for something.”

“They also said _the job will be done_ and you know, that sounds kinda ominous,” Peter says, putting his hands on his hips. 

“One of them broke before you called us on this,” Yuri says. “Said they were planning on targeting Norman’s election event at Madison Square Garden on the 31st. So we’re putting extra security on it, gonna get the bomb sniffing dogs up in there, the works.”

“Okay,” Peter says. “Good.”

“Thanks, Spider-Cop,” Yuri says, winking at him.

Peter gasps. “Oh, you’re acknowledging Spider-Cop? Is Spider-Cop on the case?”

Her face slowly falls. “I figured I might acknowledge Spider-Cop just this once, as a job well done, but I’m obviously never going to be acknowledging Spider-Cop again.”

“Spider-Cop. Spider-Cop! Let’s just keep saying Spider-Cop!”

Yuri rolls her eyes and turns away from him, heading towards her car. He usually only brings up Spider-Cop when they’re on the phone, and this is obviously the real life version of her hanging up on him.

“Hey, keep me updated with the Devil’s Breath stuff!” Peter says. “Whatever you find out on that! If it’s a thing! Hoping it’s not a thing! Especially a bad thing!”

Yuri just waves at him over her shoulder, never turning around.

~

When Peter is almost back to his apartment, Karen announces a missed call from Otto. 

“Hmm, that’s weird,” Peter says, shooting another web, swinging past the Chase building. “I didn’t hear it ring.”

“ _It was during the skirmish_ ,” Karen says.

“Oh, good word,” Peter says. “Voicemail?”

“ _I’ll play it now_.”

Peter swings down Queens Boulevard, the wind whipping past him, and some people yelp when they see him, a few cars honk, but most everybody else goes on like he’s part of the normal day-to-day.

“ _Peter_ ,” Otto’s voice says, as Peter swings and rolls to a stop on time of his apartment building, kicking up rocks. “ _I just wanted to commend your work yesterday. You see things that I don’t, and you’re helping form the future, Mr. Parker. Colonel Solomons is going to have her life changed and you are a big part of that. You’re a big part of everything we have on our plates, everything we’re going to build from here on out. I just thought you needed to hear it again. You have talent and great intelligence, and half of what I accomplish every day is because of you. Sorry, was getting sentimental going over your circuit work. Alright, I’ll see you on Monday. Hope you’re having a good weekend!_ ”

Peter is leaning against the roof door and grinning like an idiot. He admires Otto, his resolve and the things he can do, so it’s pretty damn cool to be praised like that by someone like him. He doesn’t throw around the idea of revealing his identity easily, but he can see a future where Otto knows who he is, knows what he can really do, and knows who his family is. He can imagine what Tony and Otto would get up to in the lab. They’d make _magic_ , it would be incredible. 

“One day,” Peter says to himself, figuring he’ll call him back tomorrow.

He pulls out his phone and texts Ned.

_How many parental figures can one person adopt? Now I’m thinking of Yuri like a second aunt and Otto like a crazy science uncle and I’ve already got a couple of those!!_

~

“I hope you’re not putting yourself through the ringer,” May says, over pizza from Leo’s. She lounges back in her chair and raises his eyebrows at him. “Honestly.”

“Honestly, I could say the same to you,” Peter says, looking up at her. “Linard is still gone, right?”

“Yes,” May says, averting her eyes. “But it’s fine, it’s going well. I’ve got a lot of help.”

“But it’s still not enough,” Peter says. “Do you know where he went? How long he’ll be gone?”

“He didn’t say,” May says, taking another bite of her pizza. She picks off a pepperoni, eats it on its own. “We don’t really talk about personal things, it’s mostly business. But he’s a good man. I know he’ll be back soon and then we’ll be back on track.”

“Your bird boyfriend should come back and help you,” Peter says, tapping his fingers on the table in that incessant way he does whenever he mentions Sam. Maybe it’ll associate him with irritation to May, if he keeps it up.

May scoffs. “Maybe he will. You miss him?”

“Miss kicking his ass,” Peter says, grinning.

“You are terrible,” May says, laughing. “Horrible.”

Peter sighs, and then his phone starts vibrating on the table beside his glass. That picture he took of Tony scowling at the Decemberists concert comes up, which Peter laughs at every time, and he looks up at May. “It’s Tony, mind if I get it?”

“Of course not,” May says, shaking her head. “Tell him I won the bet about the ice cube gum.”

Peter narrows his eyes as he answers the phone. “Hey,” he says. 

“Hey, kiddo,” Tony says. 

“May says she won the bet about the ice cube gum,” Peter says, watching her smile.

Tony sighs heavily. “Okay, tell her I’ll pay up tomorrow, probably,” he says.

“What the hell was this bet?” Peter asks, leaning back in his chair.

“Things Pregnant Pepper doesn’t enjoy anymore,” Tony says. “I never goddamn thought _gum_ would be on that menu, but apparently May knows more about these things than I do. Women’s intuition, I guess.”

Peter snorts, shaking his head.

“I just wanted to make sure we were still going to that award thing they’re doing for Davis tomorrow,” Tony says. “You know, I’d rather it was Spiderman up on those steps, but Osborn’s not even showing his face, just sending his lackeys to put some plastic medal around Davis’s neck…I almost feel bad for the guy. Like some kinda middle school presentation instead of a city hall commendation.”

“He deserves better, for real,” Peter says.

“Yeah, yeah, I believe you,” Tony says. “I just wish you got more credit.”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t matter,” Peter says, getting up and starting to pace around the living room. His brain begins to go into overdrive, remembering the things that happened tonight that he hasn’t told Tony yet. “Yes, we’re going, uh—yeah, we’re gonna go, but uh—we’re on a secure line, right?”

There’s a moment of silence. “Secure line? Kid—”

“It’s important!” Peter nearly yells, looking over his shoulder at May. She’s holding her wine glass, narrowing her eyes again. He turns back towards the window.

“Yes,” Tony says. “We are very secure. Super secure. Your phone is one of the most high tech things I’ve ever made because I was tired of you breaking them. It knows what it’s doing.”

“Oh, cool,” Peter says, trying not to grip it so hard. “Well, I took out these two Devil guys earlier that were trying to kill these Fisk guys, and I overheard them—well, Karen overheard them and clued me in—they were talking about something called Devil’s Breath. Sound familiar to you at all?”

Tony hums a little to himself. “Do they actually call themselves Devils?” he asks. “Like a team…gang name? Or is that moniker ours alone?”

“Ours,” Peter says. “I think. I don’t know, I just went by the masks.”

“I’ll look into it,” Tony says. “Devil’s Breath. Good listening out. To you and Karen.”

“Thanks,” Peter says. “Yuri also told me that they were thinking of targeting Osborn’s Madison Square Garden election event on the 31st.”

“Not surprised,” Tony says. “Figured they’d wanna ruin the one with the most pomp and circumstance.”

“You think they’ll try and bother Davis’s ceremony tomorrow?” Peter asks, a tinge of fear in his gut.

“Probably not,” Tony says. “Because Norman won’t be there. Kinda seems like he’s the main issue here. Looks like they’re trying to get at him, with Fisk’s weapons and bullshit, whatever they can find. Guess they’re trying to take out the remainder of the competition and use their gear how they can to target Norman. We gotta connect those dots.”

“Alright,” Peter says. “We’ll work the case more tomorrow after the ceremony.”

There’s a pause. “Work the case, huh? Were you pulling out that Spider-Cop business with Yuri again?”

Peter snorts, picks at a stray thread on his sleeve. “Maybe,” he says, as a car blaring rap music speeds by on the street below. 

“I’m sure she loves that,” Tony says. 

“Spider-Cop is my best incarnation,” Peter says, turning around and walking back over to the table.

“Ah huh, ah huh,” Tony says. “Sleep good and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Alright, you too,” Peter says. He hangs up, puts his phone back down. 

“You guys aren’t doing anything dangerous, are you?” May asks. 

Peter reaches for another piece of pizza, sitting back down. “No,” he says. “Tony doesn’t do that anymore.”

~

Life has been different since Peter came back to life, in a lot of ways. He considered Tony a father figure before all that happened, they had been spending a lot of time together in between the Vulture incident and Thanos sending his goons to New York—Peter was at the compound every weekend, at the tower every other day once Tony bought it back. Tony took him to street fairs, rented out movie theaters for him and May to see the newest films, even got a private screening of that rain forest documentary at the compound. Peter really knew things were different when Tony became his second emergency contact, when Mrs. Linda in the front office got all googly-eyed when he came in to sign the papers. 

But now his life is divided between Before Thanos and After, and things with Tony have shifted. Tony was a father figure before, but since everything went back to normal, since he got injured, he’s taken the mantle of _Dad_ and run with it. Peter can tell him anything now—the hero worship is still there but it’s evolved, it’s muted, background, behind and sprinkled between the moments of complete familiarity and comfort between them. He can discuss Ben at length, he can discuss the things that scare him without worrying about judgement or Tony blowing him off. There aren’t many secrets between them anymore, and Tony is a constant in Peter’s life that he’d be lost without. They’re domestic now—they have pasta nights, movie nights, Tony buys him toothpaste and shampoo and works with May on all the things that concern Peter’s well-being. He helps Peter with his homework, and he never lets him go without. Not in his every day life, and not as Spiderman, either. 

Peter used to look at him and doubt it, doubt that they were splayed out on a couch in the compound that Peter helped Tony pick out, watching their fifteenth episode of Brooklyn 99 in a row. He’d doubt the cookies they baked together, the sound of the smoke alarm still beeping in their ears. He’d doubt the laughter and inside jokes they made together. He’d doubt the driving lessons with May in the passenger seat and Tony in the back, the two of them hollering compliments and reassurances at him despite the fear in their voices. He’d doubt Tony waiting outside the school in his Audi. He’d doubt everything. All of it.

Now he’s familiar. Now he’s just grateful. Now he looks at it all and lives in it and can’t remember a time when Tony wasn’t who he is to him now. Peter knows his father and Ben would be happy for him, would be proud and thankful that he’s found a life where Tony Stark fills the role of _dad._

Peter used to get embarrassed when he’d call him that by accident. Flushed red and horror coursing through his veins, enough to send him to another goddamn dimension for being so stupid. But now, Tony just laughs at him, calls him _son_ right back. Peter laughs too. Because it isn’t embarrassing anymore. It’s just true.

Despite the injury, Tony still draws more than a few glances wherever he goes. Even with a cane, he still carries an air of sophistication about him that nobody else in the world can recreate, and when they walk out of the parking garage across from City Hall, he’s already catching looks from other people gathering for the ceremony. The sun is high in the sky and beating down on them, but the October chill is still blowing through even though there isn’t any snow yet. Peter can tell the ceremony is gonna be small, modest, but thankfully, there are already more people here than he expected there to be. He quickly texts May to let her know that they made it, but he knows she probably won’t answer because she’s so busy at the shelter. He hopes she’s not pushing herself too hard.

“I’m actually glad Mr. Mayor isn’t gonna be around,” Tony says, as they step up onto the sidewalk and head towards City Hall. “Never liked the guy, but I’m pretty outspoken about that. I’d be surprised if they don’t snipe me on sight.”

Peter steps a little closer to him on instinct, like he could do something about a goddamn sniper out of the suit. Like there’s actually a sniper here. Peter rolls his eyes at himself. “He’s just a creep or something?” he asks, as they stop at the crosswalk. His general understanding of most politicians is that they’re major creeps.

Tony narrows his eyes at him. “I haven’t waxed poetic about Osborn to you yet?”

“Maybe you should keep your voice down,” Peter says, as traffic creeps through the road. The streets on either side of City Hall are closed down, and there are two news trucks parked in front of the steps beside the growing crowd.

Tony scoffs, and they keep walking when the light tells them to. “Oh, I’ve just heard all kinds of weird rumors about shit that goes on at Oscorp,” he says. “Malpractice, misappropriation of funds, dangerous experiments. He’s the kind of guy that Bruce and I would never touch with a ten foot pole. So you can imagine how pissed we were when he was elected.”

Peter doesn’t really look too much into city politics, but from the look on Tony’s face and the venom in his voice, he thinks Spiderman might need to take an interest. 

“I think he’s got a son that’s about your age,” Tony says. 

“How the hell did he get elected in the first place?” Peter asks, his voice low. They step onto City Hall grounds and move a little towards the left of the crowd, close to Channel Six. The City Hall building is a ton of grand windows, pillars and columns, lots of stairs leading up to the main entrance. There’s a podium at the top of the stairs, and a group of people off to the side talking amongst themselves. They look important, all dressed up fancy, and Peter sees a couple cops close by too, including Officer Davis.

“Fear mongering,” Tony says. “Money. You got a particular spot you wanna be at?”

“I guess right here,” Peter says, as they edge up to the barricade, right up against it. He’s getting that weirdo inclination to try to get Davis’s attention, and he watches him wave to someone sitting in the special area roped off in the grassy spot at the end of the street. Peter stands up on his tip toes and looks over the heads of the crowd, and he thinks he sees Davis’s son Miles and his wife over there waving back at him. Miles is tall for a freshman, and both he and his mom are dressed in blues that match Davis’s uniform. Peter smiles to himself.

“You really like this guy, huh?” Tony asks. 

“He’s a good guy,” Peter says, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the barricade. 

“I like it when the cops actually…work with you,” Tony says. He leans down too, and starts talking low again, his cane in his hand. “I hate the word vigilante. Can’t they see more good is being done than harm? Christ.”

Peter shrugs. He’s pretty much used to it. It definitely got worse, when Tony got out of the game and everyone else relocated, but he’s still been able to get things done with Yuri on his side. He looks off towards the rest of the people here, sees them looking at Tony. “Does it feel weird to be…you…and be on this side of the barrier?” Peter asks.

Tony narrows his eyes. “People looking?”

“Of course people are looking.”

Now Tony’s the one shrugging. He straightens up a little bit and lets his cane retract in so it’s smaller, and then he fixes the lapels on his jacket. He looks around and Peter can only see the back of his head, but he can imagine the look he’s giving everyone else. Tony looks back down at Peter, laughs and leans on the barricade again.

“I always forget your cane can do that,” Peter says. 

“It can do a lot more than that,” Tony scoffs. “Retracting is a typical old person perk. I’ve got lots of tricks up my sleeve.” He looks around again, off towards where Miles and Davis’s wife are. “And I could have pulled some strings, gotten us over there where the family and fat cats are, but wouldn’t that have been….weird?”

“I guess so,” Peter says. He isn’t sure what’s going through his head. Maybe he thinks Tony is more vulnerable down here. Maybe he always thinks that, when they’re not safe in the compound or in the tower. Maybe this is something he hasn’t really acknowledged yet, in his own mind, but when he looks at him here amongst all kinds of potential threats, his paranoia skyrockets. He looks at that cane. The way he walks now. Thinks of the early days when they got back to Earth—Tony’s coma, his hesitant first steps, his tears and night terrors. 

Tony doesn’t have an iron suit protecting him anymore. He’s got Peter. And Peter knows it.

“Hey,” Tony says, nudging into him a little bit. “What’s all that? You okay?”

“Yeah,” Peter says, clearing his throat. He watches the group of people, including Davis, start heading over to the podium, which thankfully gives him a way out of an emotional conversation. “Uh, looks like they’re getting ready to start.”

Tony follows Peter’s gaze, tapping his cane into the palm of his hand. “God, did Osborn send the Parks and Rec guy to give out this award? What a shitbird.”

Peter snorts, looking around again as the crowd continues to fill in. The guys in the news truck get out with about as much noise as they can make, perching their cameras on their shoulders and whipping wires over the small cherry tree beside them. The truck backs up once they’re out, re-parking a few feet away. 

Peter feels a strange pull in his stomach and he looks around now that he can see the street, watching people go in and out of the Citibank across the way. He can see the place where the cars stop, and there are a few cops standing out there rerouting traffic and talking to interested pedestrians.

“You’re acting weird,” Tony says, as someone taps on the microphone. “Like…off.”

“Does it feel weird to you?” Peter whispers, wondering if his own thoughts are coloring his vision, if his paranoia is setting off his spidey sense when there’s nothing to be worried about. Osborn isn’t here. The Devils are targeting Osborn. 

“Are you getting a feeling?” Tony asks. 

Peter glances up at the podium and his heart sinks into his gut.

“Alright, alright, everyone,” Norman Osborn says, standing up there in a three piece suit that shows the extent of his wealth. “Thankfully, I was able to make it back into town for this occasion. I didn’t want to miss the chance to personally honor such a hero.”

“Jesus,” Tony mutters. He looks back and forth between Norman and Peter, and Peter knows Tony can tell his panic is overcoming him. Norman keeps talking, but there’s a sharp tone going off in Peter’s ears. 

Osborn’s here. They could be here too. 

Tony drapes an arm around Peter’s shoulders and tugs him against him. “Hey, it doesn’t matter,” he says. “Shit, if we didn’t know—those assholes didn’t know. Mr. Mayor clearly keeps his travel plans under wraps, this must have been some kind of last minute decision—and there’s no way they’d have enough time to race over here, not without being seen.”

Peter nods, watching Tony nod back. He looks over his shoulder again, but he doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary. 

“You wanna go?” Tony asks. 

“No, it’s fine,” Peter says, watching Osborn gesture off towards Officer Davis, who’s standing next to him. He tries to let Tony’s logic settle in his head. It wasn’t announced that Osborn would be here, they had no idea, and the crowd didn’t either, considering their clear and mixed surprise—so the Devils wouldn’t know unless they’ve got someone on the inside. And Peter figures, with all that’s been going on lately, that they would probably know about something like that. “You’re right, you’re…it makes sense.”

“I always try to make sense,” Tony says. 

Peter looks at the stairs again where everybody is. All the important people dressed in suits are standing a few feet back from the podium, at the edge of the second set of stairs. Another guy rushes up and joins them, standing at the end of the group. 

“Who’s that?” Peter asks.

“Uh…that’s the public works guy,” Tony says. “Something Aubin. Something like that.” He pats Peter on the back, and Peter looks over his shoulder again. Both shoulders. Still nothing. No one looks suspicious. He figures _he_ looks suspicious, looking around like this. There’s a redheaded girl taking pictures, a little boy dressed up like a police officer. A few families, a few hardhat guys, probably on break from the Hilton construction across the street. 

“We should’ve thought he might make a surprise appearance,” Peter mutters, watching as Osborn takes a medal out of a velvet box and pins it to Davis’s uniform. “We should have thought about that.”

“Maybe the cops did,” Tony says. 

“I feel like they would have told me,” he says. He didn’t want to show up here as Spiderman. He didn’t want to take away from Davis’s moment by being a big red and blue billboard in the middle of the crowd. But he could have suited up, stayed a good distance away, ready to strike just in case. Now he’s exposed. Now Tony is in danger, too. Just because he wanted to attend a goddamn award ceremony as Peter Parker. He should know he doesn’t get moments like this without strings attached. Especially in this new climate.

He takes out his phone. Goes into Spiderman Stealth mode, texts Yuri. _Osborn is at the ceremony. I’m not close. Anybody around other than uniforms at the barricades?_

The crowd erupts into applause and Peter’s heart lurches again, and he looks up to see Davis behind the podium and Osborn moving over to the far side of the stairs, a few of the important-looking people flocking around him. Four of them still stand there behind Davis, in a long important-looking line.

Peter hears lots of hooting and hollering and sees that it’s Miles and his mother, standing up and cheering. Davis gives them a wide smile.

“Uh, as you can see—and hear, mostly hear,” Davis says, “I’ve got a pretty good support system keeping me going. I’d like to thank our city’s government for this honor, I’d like to thank our mayor for presenting it to me, and I—I definitely share this with my wife, Rio and my son, Miles. I wouldn’t be who I am without them.”

Peter looks over at Miles, all the smiling people around him. He isn’t sure if he’s seen him at school before, but Peter remembers being a freshman, and Miles seems a lot more confident than he was at the time. He points over at Davis and Davis points back, both of them laughing. 

That’s when Peter feels it. Something like terror in his bones, and if he thought his spidey sense was going off before, he doesn’t know what the hell is happening now. He feels dizzy and he grabs onto Tony’s shoulder, trying to keep the presence of mind not to throw him off balance.

“Okay, Pete, what’s going on?” Tony asks, holding onto him and leaning down. “Is something happening?”

“Yes,” Peter whispers. “I don’t know what.” He sucks in a breath and looks up, sees where Osborn is—off a ways away, down in the middle of the side stairs. He’s on the phone. Peter can’t hear him, even with his super hearing. He tries, but he can’t. He can’t see his face either, just the back of his head.

He needs to start searching. This feeling is tugging him in a certain direction, and Tony helps him along, snapping his cane back out and bracing it on the ground. They move back, pushing past everyone behind them, winding around the news truck beside them. They keep going until Peter stutters to a stop, a little ways away from edge of the crowd.

“Kid,” Tony says.

Peter pulls back a bit, looking around. He feels so dizzy, like he’s losing it, and maybe he is losing it, maybe he is, maybe it’s all getting to him, finally overwhelming him, dragging him to the ground, dragging him under the surface. 

Then there’s another jolt of fear, and he almost doubles over. His spidey sense doesn’t usually feel like physical pain but it’s manifesting different now, racing all through his veins. He feels Tony’s hand on his back, and just as he’s starting to doubt himself again, he sees it. Sees the source of all his panic, his fight or flight, the alarm bells going off in his head.

“Okay, lemme get you out of here, something’s going on—”

“Something is going on,” Peter says. “Here, God—look. Look.”

He sees a man, the sun hitting his face and whiting out his features, approach the two guards at the barricades where the street is cut off. He touches them both, a gentle grip on their shoulders, but they both arch backwards, and it looks—it looks like—

“What the fuck is that?” Tony asks. 

Peter can’t hear anything, can’t hear Davis speaking, can’t hear the crowd, can barely hear Tony. The two cops almost look like they’re—inverted, like they’ve gone completely black and white, and then they crumple to the ground out of sight.

The man walks around the barricade like nothing happened, and no one notices him. No one but Peter and Tony. And Peter knows who he is.

“That’s Linard,” Peter says, his throat going tight. He’s seen him plenty of times, since May started working at the shelter. Working the kitchen, making the beds, sweeping in the hallways. Handing out that goddamn chocolate he always has. That slicked back blond hair, his broad shoulders and slim frame. He’s wearing a suit similar to one Peter’s seen him in before, but usually he looks relaxed, kind. He doesn’t look anything like that now. “It’s Manuel Linard, it’s—it’s May’s boss. From the shelter.” He’s far enough away that Peter doesn’t think he sees them watching, but he doesn’t seem to care, either. Because he goes inverted too. His skin, his clothes, his hair, everything. Negative. Peter’s never seen anything like it before.

“Okay, yeah,” Tony says. “We gotta—”

It feels like the world is moving in slow motion. Peter sucks in a breath, because he feels another sharp shock of panic. He turns, looks back towards the stairs where Davis is still speaking. The last guy in the line of important-looking suits steps forward, grabs onto his jacket, ready to rip it open. 

And Peter feels it. His spidey sense is going wild. He looks back at Linard, then back at the man as he goes negative too. The look of it—it sends chills down Peter’s spine. 

There’s something strapped to his chest.

“Bombs,” Peter says, as people start screaming. “Bombs, bombs, that—that guy—public works guy—oh God—”

“What, what?”

He feels it coming, doesn’t know where to go, what to do, how to fix it. He can’t fix it. He can’t. 

“Get down!” Peter yells. He hears the screaming erupt louder, the panicked yelling, the buzzing horror all around them. He grabs Tony and pushes him down to the ground, covering him before he can do anything about it, and he feels the blast hit, hard and hot and shocking and everywhere— 

Something slams into him and he doesn’t feel anything at all anymore.


	5. the oppressive glare

Peter slowly opens his eyes. His head is pounding, bolts of pain sparking through his scalp, and he reaches up and rubs at his eyes, covers his face against the light. He sort of feels like he’s suspended in mid-air, or buried deep underground. He can’t tell which. Both. Everything hurts.

“Peter,” Bruce’s voice says. “Hey, how—how’re you feeling?” He reaches out, touches Peter’s shoulder. 

That—that makes something click inside Peter’s head, and all his own pain and lethargy fall to the wayside as the memories come flooding back, and the lack of a certain presence by his bedside becomes very apparent.

“Where’s Tony?” Peter asks, pulling his hands back so he can look around. He’s in his room at the tower, his bedroom, not the medbay, and Tony isn’t anywhere. Bruce opens his mouth, closes it fast. Peter’s heart sinks and he nearly topples out of bed, knocking Bruce’s arm off him as he stumbles towards the door. “Tony?” he yells, rushing out into the hallway. “Tony, Tony?”

He hears Bruce following him. “Peter, it’s—”

“Tony!” Peter yells, looking around in the hallway, pure panic fogging his head.

“Hey!” Tony says, turning the corner and hobbling up to him, May on his heels. “Hey, hey, I’m right here.”

Peter launches himself at him, relief and residual fear nearly making him collapse to the ground before Tony catches him. Tony wraps him in a hug and Peter buries his face in his shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut tight, trying to snuff out the horrific future that was slowly forming in the few seconds between the bedroom and here. The future Peter’s been paranoid about since he heard Tony screaming on that scorched red planet, his leg twisted, pulsing with the poisonous energy Thanos shot him with. The future that rises up in Peter’s mind’s eye whenever they’re on the move, whenever there’s a possibility of someone taking Tony away from him. A stray bullet in a bad neighborhood. A cab driver not paying attention. A wrong step on too many stairs. 

“I’m right here, bud,” Tony says, rubbing his shoulder, ruffling Peter’s hair. “I’m right here.”

“Jesus,” Peter whispers. “You scared me.”

“I scared you?” Tony laughs, his hand at the base of Peter’s neck. “You scared me. The martyr moves are _my_ moves, kiddo, I’m the one supposed to be tossing _you_ to the ground, shielding _you, you’re_ the precious cargo—”

Peter shakes his head. “Nope, no, sorry.” He sighs, all of it coming back to him with every heavy pound of his head.

“You move too fast, Mr. Parker,” Bruce says, breathing hard. “Didn’t even let me get a sentence out!”

“Sorry,” Peter mutters. He looks up, sees May and the concern in her eyes, and he tugs her into the hug too. Both she and Tony chuckle a little bit, but Peter can hear the worry and exhaustion there too.

The two of them. He can’t lose either one of them. Tony is in danger all the goddamn time just by being who he is, but Peter remembers Linard, May’s _boss_ standing out there, looking like that…clearly affecting and orchestrating what happened…and he knows May is in danger too.

He squeezes his eyes shut tight again, resting his head on both of their shoulders, and so many questions and fears pop up behind his eyes. He’s dizzy, struck with permeating fear, but he isn’t sure if he should tell May about Linard, at least not yet. Whatever they might think, whatever they might have seen, they aren’t sure about anything yet. He doesn’t want to put her in more danger than she’s already in.

He pulls back, wiping at his eyes, and his head still hurts so fucking much. They’re both holding onto him, keeping him upright, and Bruce is still standing behind them, his hands on his hips. 

“Uh, can I talk to Tony for a minute?” Peter asks, looking at May, then at Bruce. “By ourselves?”

Bruce nods, blowing out a breath. “I’m gonna go make a phone call,” he says. 

“Of course,” May says, though there’s something behind her eyes. She leans in and presses a long kiss to Peter’s forehead, rubbing Tony’s shoulder. “I’ll be in the office, alright?” she says, handing Tony his cane.

They both nod at her, and then Tony leads him back into his bedroom, an arm around his waist. His cane hits the wood floor loudly with every step they take, and Peter looks at him once they sit down on the bed, sees a few scratches on Tony’s cheek, a long scratch down his neck. Peter sighs, chewing on his lower lip. 

“Your head hurting?” Tony asks. Peter barely has time to nod before Tony is getting up again, heading towards the bathroom. Peter isn’t sure if his limp is more pronounced or if he’s freaking out again, and he wipes at his eyes before he can start crying. He hears Tony open up the mirror, turn on the sink, and then he comes back with a glass of water and some aspirin. He hands them to Peter and Peter takes them quick, putting the water on the bedside table and hanging his head. 

Tony retracts his cane in and makes it small, twisting it around in his hands. He puts it down on the bed beside him. “Don’t…I wish you hadn’t done…God, kid,” he says. 

“Tony—”

“I’m serious,” Tony says. “I don’t want that. I know you’re a hero but I will always, always choose the possibility where you’re safe over me.”

“Same,” Peter says, snapping, looking up at him. “I mean—I will always—you know what I mean. You know what I mean. If I see something’s happening and I have the opportunity I am not gonna let something happen to you, I’m sorry.”

“Pete—”

“You’re gonna be a father,” Peter says, his heart beating in his ears. “You—you _are_ a father,” he says, his voice breaking, and the tears spring to his eyes anyway, even though he doesn’t want them to. He stops talking, shaking his head. Tony grips his shoulder, pulling him closer. “How many people died?” Peter asks, quickly. “God, how long—how long was I out?”

“About four hours,” Tony says. “Uh—they’re still updating but it looks like….the number’s fifteen, right now.” He clears his throat, and there’s a heavy silence. “Uh—Davis—Officer Davis—he didn’t make it.”

Peter winces because the news hurts, it feels like a slap in the face and he shakes his head, the tears blurring his vision. He feels like he can’t breathe, he feels like he’s drowning. He can’t believe it, he can’t believe it, it’s not fair, it’s not _fair_. He sucks in a wavering breath, covers his eyes with his hand, and Tony pulls him in against his chest.

Peter crumples.

“I’m sorry,” Tony whispers. “I’m sorry, Pete. I’m so sorry.”

Davis was a good person. Peter only knew him for a short while but he supported him, he didn’t judge like a lot of the rest of them do, he worked with him, he genuinely cared. He was clearly a good father. Peter should have seen it, should have known, should have realized, should have fucking taken care of it. He should have done his job. He should have saved those people. Davis thought he was going out to get an award for bravery. Then he never came home.

Peter coughs, trying to concentrate, almost too scared to ask his next question. “Uh, uh—Miles and—and his—and his mom—”

“They made it,” Tony says. “They’re okay. Osborn too, he was…he was too far away, just bumps and bruises. The dickhead.” He clears his throat again. “We would have been toast if we hadn’t moved back. I would have been toast if you hadn’t…done what you did.”

That’s the only consolation. Peter feels like an idiot crying against Tony like this—he’s not Miles, he’s not a freshman in high school whose dad was just murdered. He gets to keep his father figure. He was selfish, he could have gone, tackled Linard, tried to stop it. But he just couldn’t think straight, he was panicking too much, his own fear about losing Tony clouding his vision.

There were kids in that crowd. Peter can’t ask about them.

“What do we tell May?” Peter asks, his voice muffled against Tony’s shirt. 

“Are you sure it was him?” Tony asks. “Her boss?”

Peter nods. “Positive.”

“Did you ever suspect him of being…a super villain? Shit,” Tony says, rubbing Peter’s back. “We don’t even know if he was in charge of whatever happened there—”

“He definitely looked in charge,” Peter says, pulling back and rubbing his eyes. 

“Yeah,” Tony says. “He did.”

“And the public works guy,” Peter says, sniffling. “He had…bombs on, and nobody knew.”

“That’s an inside man if there ever was one,” Tony says. “How could they have not known about that? Guy in his position doing something like that? Planning it? Getting away with it? He must have known Osborn’s plans, overheard them or something, let Linard know.”

“Linard…made him turn…negative, whatever that was,” Peter says. “You think he could be, like…mind controlling him? And maybe other people?”

“Maybe,” Tony says. “It’s possible. We don’t know much right now. I still haven’t hit anything on the term Devil’s Breath. But I think we gotta put a rush on that.”

“I don’t know what to tell her,” Peter says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I don’t even know if I should tell her.”

“I guess we know what the extended vacation was,” Tony says, shaking his head. “Hopefully he stays the hell away from that shelter.”

“He has to,” Peter says. He swallows hard, looking around. He sees his TV on the dresser, dark, and he worries about what he’s gonna see on the news. He knows there’s probably footage of him, him and Tony. Him being fucking useless, knocked out like an idiot. He glances over his shoulder, sees his phone plugged in on the other beside table. He crawls over and grabs it, opening Messages. He has a bunch of unread ones, but he can’t stomach them right now.

“What’s going on?” Tony asks. “I already spoke to Ned, let him know you’re okay.”

“I’m texting Sam,” Peter says. “Telling him to come home. He’s supposed to be her fucking boyfriend, well—he needs to be around.”

Tony laughs softly. “Good. Give him hell.”

Peter is firm in his intentions and he locks his phone after he sends the message, collapsing down into the pillows. “What the hell hit me in the head?” he asks, wincing. 

“Think it was part of the building,” Tony says, patting Peter’s ankle. “Uh—shit was flying everywhere, one of the reporters helped me drag you towards the outer barricade. Then Happy came and got us. It was…pandemonium.”

Peter sits up, turns around. “Did you see where Linard went?”

“No,” Tony says, shaking his head. “By the time I was back on my feet and attending to you, he was…he was gone.”

Peter digs his thumbs into his eyes, sees stars. Sees the darkness he dove into when the bomb went off. He can see Davis’s face.

“Um, Bruce and I are keeping an eye out for Linard, and any kind of activity like what he was exhibiting. The negative thing. We’re looking into Aubin too, the bomber, see what…was going on there.” He sighs. “I wonder if it’s some kind of Jekyll and Hyde thing,” he says. “With Linard.”

“Like multiple personalities?” Peter asks, opening his eyes again, his vision fuzzy. 

“Maybe,” Tony says. “We shouldn’t count it out.”

Peter nods and they both sigh heavily, and there’s a deep tension in the room, thick worry about all the things they have to deal with. 

“You two alright?” Pepper asks, standing in the doorway. “I was gonna go out, get some food, do you guys want anything in particular?” She braces her hand on her stomach, sympathy on her face as she looks back and forth between them.

“You don’t need to go out,” Tony says, walking over to her. “I can go.”

“Neither one of you should,” Peter says, before he means to.

“Happy—” Tony starts.

“No, no,” Peter says. He can’t think about anyone he knows here going out. Anything could happen, anywhere. 

“We can’t keep ourselves locked up, Pete,” Tony says, standing next to Pepper. 

She walks into the room, takes Peter’s hands when she reaches him, and tugs him into a hug. He closes his eyes and hugs her back. He sighs, trying to swallow back the feeling of failure, trying to keep himself from needing to leap into action right this second, despite how awful he feels.

“Oh,” Pepper says, gripping his shoulder. She pulls back a little bit, putting a hand on her stomach. “She’s kicking.”

Peter looks down, looks back up at her, looks down again. He’s missed the kicking by moments almost every time, which Pepper attributes to the baby being _a little pain in the ass, just like her father_. Peter quickly puts his hand on her stomach, far past the point of asking after all these months, and Pepper grabs his wrist, repositioning his hand. And then he feels it. A small little thump, once, twice, three times, then another for good measure. Like she was waiting for him to be sad, to be lower than low, to finally give him this opportunity. He laughs a little bit, looking up at Pepper, then over at Tony.

“Hannah finally stopped playing hard to get, huh?” Pepper says, softly.

“Guess so,” Peter says, grinning. Then he does a double take, shock running through him. “Hannah?” he asks. “Did you say—”

“Thought it might be a good time to tell you,” Pepper says. “Hoped it might…lift your spirits a little bit.”

Peter looks over at Tony, sees him smiling, looking at the two of them. “Hannah Maria Stark,” he says. “Thought it had a nice ring to it.”

“It does,” Peter says, feeling her kick again. “It really does.”

~

They decide not to tell May about Linard until they find out more, and Peter still isn’t sure if it’s the right decision. They stay with Tony that night at the tower, and Peter doesn’t turn on the news once. The baby’s name gave Peter a brief moment of respite amongst the hell and horror, and when the happiness gives way he’s left with a couple different things. The reminder of what he lost, what he should have been able to prevent at City Hall. And the idea that he cannot let Hannah Maria Stark be born into a world with this kind of uncertainty. He’s gotta make New York safe again, for her, for May, for Tony, for everybody. He knows Tony will always be in danger as long as Peter himself is. So Peter has to put himself out of danger. He has to fix this.

The Devils take responsibility for the bombing, bringing themselves into the limelight without giving anything away. All they are is a mask, with a leader draped in shadow. Peter knows better. He looks for Miles in school and then feels like an idiot for doing it, because who goes to school right after their dad dies? He remembers what it was like after Ben, how he didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything, and he feels selfish again, having even slightly expected this kid to be here. 

He goes hard at the Devils on patrol, and he knocks out a couple more of their bases, but he isn’t able to get any information out of them. They’re clamming up after the bombing, just the statement of responsibility and nothing else, like New York’s own terrorist organization. They’re still killing any Fisk guys that get in their way, stealing expensive shit, and Peter wonders what goes on when he isn’t around. At least the police have woken up now, after losing one of their own. But Peter has a feeling, a twisting, sickening feeling, that the Devils are five steps ahead of all of them. 

Two days after the bombing, they hold Jefferson Davis’s funeral.

Peter doesn’t like funerals. He doesn’t like death. He doesn’t think anybody truly _likes_ death, but he has a weird thing where he just can’t ever accept it. It always feels like an open door, like an unfinished song, something cut and left incomplete. He always expects that person to come back, always expects some kind of magical solution to present itself to him so he can make things right again. He figures that the way he came back to life doesn’t help this affliction, doesn’t make it any more solid and definite that he can’t bring the dead back. But this situation is different. He’s not Tony Stark. This isn’t a cosmic war. This is clear cut, and unavoidable. Davis is dead. And Peter can’t bring him back. 

He remembers Ben’s funeral. Through the eyes of someone that should have understood all that, having lost his parents already, but all he could feel was confusion, hurt, a bitterness so sour that he can still taste it on his tongue. He was in a suit too big for him, shoes too small, too old. He walked through that funeral home like he was made of glass, worried that he might break if he looked at something wrong, if he didn’t count all the weird diamonds in the carpet, if he didn’t spend enough time by the side of the coffin. It scared him, seeing Ben like that. As if that memory would usurp all others, be the only thing he remembered. Dead, dead, dead. Not coming back. How could it be possible? For someone so important to just be gone? Surely there had to be a way to get him back. It couldn’t be the end. 

Peter remembers staring at Ben’s face, there in that coffin. He was wearing his favorite tie, the purple one with the yellow stripes. On one hand, he looked like he was sleeping, but on the other…he didn’t look like he was sleeping at all. Peter remembers staring at him, thinking _any minute now, this’ll be over. Any minute now, he’ll open his eyes. Any minute now._

He’s had nightmares about May in that box. Tony in one too. Their lifeless bodies, their folded hands, the clothes he would have picked out for them, clothes that would soon be frayed and moldy from being buried underground. Their faces, decay ready to tear them apart piece by piece, slowly, skin bloating, crumbling. Skeletons. Those are the nightmares that snap him out of sleep when he realizes what’s happening, when he realizes he’s facing one of his worst fears. And he wishes he could do that now, on the way to Davis’s funeral. He keeps whispering to himself, mouthing silently. _Wake up, wake up._

“Hey,” Tony’s voice says. “Hey, kiddo. You doing okay?”

Peter clears his throat, his vision blurry, and he looks away from him, out the window. “Yeah,” he croaks.

“We don’t have to go,” Tony says. “We could go back into the city, get a pizza or something.”

“No, it’s okay,” Peter says. “I want to.” He feels a duty to go, even though the very idea is turning his stomach. Davis will never know who he is, who Spiderman really was. It eats at Peter, knowing that. He reaches over and turns the radio station.

“ _And why wasn’t Spiderman there?_ ” J. Jonah Jameson’s voice says. “ _He’s at every mugging, every break-in, every damn happening in this whole city but he’s not at the City Hall bombing? Something smells fishy to me, folks. And I’ll reiterate what I’ve already been saying, I think he could be working with these people. Showing us what he wants us to think, and then—_ ”

“God fucking dammit,” Tony says, quickly turning the radio off altogether. 

Peter hadn’t realized he was frozen, squeezing his own fingers so hard he could break them. He swallows hard, looks at Tony, watches him seethe.

“That goddamn bottom feeder,” Tony says, gripping the steering wheel tight. “I’m gonna call the goddamn radio station and get him pulled off the air. I’ll sue his fucking ass, he won’t even know what hit him.”

Peter chews on his lower lip. “Are, uh—other people saying that?” he asks. “That they think I might be working with—”

“No,” Tony says, looking over at him. 

They roll up to a red light and people cross the street in front of the car. A woman in a trench coat hails a cab a few feet away. A group of girls laugh at something on a boy’s phone. No one knows what the hell’s at stake here, they don’t know what’s going on in their city, and that worries him even more. 

“No,” Tony says again. “No one is as goddamn stupid as Jameson and I swear to you, I’ll stuff that guy’s microphone up his ass _tonight_ , Peter.”

Peter sighs, looking down at his hands.

~

Peter sits shoulder to shoulder with Tony throughout the service, which is cut off from the public. The only reason they’re able to be there is _because_ of Tony, and he’s worried that they might have overstepped their boundaries. But they keep to the back of the crowd, family, friends, more cops and firefighters than Peter has ever seen in one place, and he tries to keep his emotions in check when Miles stands up to give a speech, his voice breaking on a recollection of a camping trip when Davis managed to avoid getting hit by lightning. Twice. 

He’s only a freshman. He has his whole life ahead of him, and now that’s years and years and years he has to live without his dad. With only a memory, instead of that person he loved so much.

Peter doesn’t approach the coffin. He has his opportunity, but he stays seated, and Tony stays with him.

He feels worse at the cemetery than at the church. Feels worse, watching Davis go into the ground. He gets those flashes. Real memories, of Ben. Then the nightmares. May. Tony. Ned. All of them. Everyone. His own bloodied, broken body, in an unmarked grave, somewhere no one will ever find him. But it wouldn’t matter. Because everyone he loves is dead. 

“Pete,” Tony says, softly, tugging on his elbow. “You ready to go?”

Peter shudders, looking around. The sky is getting darker with an oncoming storm. People are slowly walking away, some leaving flowers on the new grave, and Peter chews on the inside of his cheek. He sees Miles over underneath the tent, standing away from his mom, who’s talking to a herd of policemen. 

“Um,” Peter says. He looks at Tony. “Can you give me a sec?”

Tony looks up where Peter was looking, and he nods at him. “Of course,” he says. “I’ll be right here.”

Peter approaches Miles slowly, worried about spooking him. He picks up some of his own nervous ticks when he looks at him, the way Miles picks at the hem of his shirt, the way he chews on his lower lip. Peter can tell he feels out of place—not that he doesn’t know these people, but more like he never thought he would be in this situation, and he keeps waking up to the reality of it.

“Miles?” Peter asks, softly as he can.

Miles looks up at him, a little wild-eyed. “Do I know you?” he asks. 

“I’m Peter,” Peter says, feeling dumb. “I—we go to the same school—”

“You’re the kid that’s hanging out with Tony Stark,” Miles says, and he looks around as a gust of wind blows through, rippling the flaps of the tent above them. He looks at Peter again. “Is he your dad?”

“No,” Peter says, fast. He winces a little bit. “Not…biologically.”

“Loaded statement,” Miles says, but he wraps his arms around his middle, closing himself off. 

Peter shakes his head. “Look, uh, I just wanted…I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” he says. _I worked with your dad. He saved me. He was a good cop, he was a good person. He didn’t deserve to die._

“Yeah,” Miles says. “Everybody’s sorry.”

“I know how you feel,” Peter says. He starts to share, about Ben, about his parents, but he doesn’t want this to be about him. It isn’t about him. “I know—I’m sorry. I’m just really sorry.”

Miles sighs heavily, but he’s not looking at him anymore. “Yeah, thanks,” he says. “Me too.”

~

Peter is in the lab with Otto the next day, working on the dimensions of the circuit changes for Colonel Solomons’s arm. Otto’s had the news on about the bombing since it happened, but he’s been surprisingly quiet about the whole thing. He’s sitting across the room on his laptop, downing his fourth cup of coffee in the last hour. Peter clicks his tongue. He’s gotta keep an eye on that.

“ _The seventeen victims will be memorialized when the government contractors start the construction on the City Hall building, so says Mayor Osborn—_ ”

Otto scoffs, shaking his head. Peter looks over at him, a chill running down his arms, and Otto looks over his shoulder at him. He sighs, putting his coffee cup back down on the table. The light above him buzzes and casts shadows, and Peter sighs too, rubbing his eyes. He looks at his work again.

“I’m sorry, Peter,” Otto says. “I just—despise the fact that all those poor people had to die while our lovely mayor walked away without a scratch.”

“Does everybody hate him?” Peter asks, rearranging a negative value on his tablet, disrupting the output. 

“He isn’t a good person,” Otto says, and when Peter looks at him he sees an expression he never expected. Otto shakes it off, concern presenting itself there instead. “You’re sure you’re doing alright? I don’t exactly expect you to be here, after what happened. But you’ve been diligent.”

“I’m fine,” Peter says. He’s been trying to avoid thinking about Davis and everybody else, and he sorta wishes he had enough gall to go turn off Otto’s TV. He turns back towards his tablet. “Working helps, definitely.”

“Well,” Otto says. “I’ve been knee-deep in paperwork since—”

The main door swings open despite the fact that it should have been locked, and Peter nearly launches himself at whoever the hell is breaking in here before he sees who it is. He skids to a halt a couple feet away from his chair, suddenly face to face with Norman Osborn and three of his aides. He doesn’t know if he’s losing it, manifesting him here because he’s been on his mind so much lately, but when he sees the look on Otto’s face, the way he rises to his feet, he knows they’re both seeing the same thing.

“Norman,” Otto says. “Speak of the devil and he shall appear.”

Peter looks back and forth between them. That isn’t exactly the first thing he expected Otto to say when faced with the mayor of their city, bad feelings or not. Peter wonders if they’ve crossed paths before—but shit, they must have, because Osborn is here, and Otto doesn’t seem surprised. Osborn looks strange in this environment, and Peter’s never seen him up this close. He’s only been getting bad information about this guy lately, and it puts him on the defense. 

Osborn turns up his nose at their lab, twisting around like the state of it makes him sick. “I knew this place was a bit of a mess,” Osborn says. “But I didn’t think you could make it even more of a mess than it already was.” He walks over to the closest table, which is covered in boxes and unused parts and pieces. “This is definitely a dangerous workplace situation, isn’t it, Tina?” he asks, looking at one of the people he has with him.

“Yes, sir,” she says. 

“What’s going on here?” Otto asks, taking a quick look at Peter and back at Osborn again. His whole body language has changed, his tone is rougher—it’s like even having him here is sending Otto in a different direction.

“Yeah, Otto, I’m gonna have to cut the grants for you and your young friend here,” Osborn says, readjusting his jacket. “And whoever else you’ve got on my payroll.”

Peter winces. “Wait—you’re paying us?” he asks, without meaning to.

“Oh, you haven’t shared with him—”

“Paying us is a generous way to put it,” Otto says, approaching Osborn menacingly. “And now he has the nerve to pull back the ludicrously small amount of money—are you actually serious or is this another one of your games?”

“I’m serious,” Osborn says. “You’ve had plenty of time to do something—”

“We are on the _cusp_ —”

“The cusp of what?” Osborn asks, narrowing his eyes. “The cusp of what more seasoned scientists have figured out years ago? Sorry, Otto. I know how we got here, but I just can’t carry you anymore. I’ve got more important things to pay for, with the state this city is in.”

“You are the goddamn reason this city is in this state,” Otto says, jamming his pointer finger against Osborn’s chest. The second aide, a taller man than Osborn and Otto both, approaches, so Peter decides to approach too. Stops close to Otto’s shoulder, but Osborn clearly doesn’t think his presence is of any consequence. 

“Keep on thinking that,” Osborn says. “Keep on being that same man, stuck in the past. It doesn’t matter to me anymore.” He looks him up and down, briefly takes a look at Peter, and he turns on his heel, the other two following. “The money will dry up this afternoon,” he says, not bothering to look over his shoulder. “What you do with this rat trap doesn’t matter to me.”

They push the door open, all three of them walking out, leaving Peter and Otto in a different world than they confronted them in.

“Um,” Peter says, looking at Otto, who looks like he was just punched in the face. “What just…what just happened?”

Otto grits his teeth, shaking his head. He looks up at Peter, takes one wavering step backwards, and nearly collapses. Peter rushes over, takes his arm. 

“Hey, hey,” Peter says. “Let’s, uh…let’s go sit.”

“I’m sorry, Peter,” Otto says, but he doesn’t sound sorry. He still just sounds angry. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about him. The way he—fit in with our world.”

Peter sits him down and steps back, his hands on his hips. He looks back over towards the door, which is still hanging open a little bit. Nerves shoot through him and he doesn’t know what the hell is happening, why Otto is acting the way he’s acting. “Well—tell me now,” he says.

Otto sighs. “I worked with that piece of human excrement years ago. Oscorp—in college, the two of us were so close, everyone in our fraternity called us the O’s. Well, that’s how we wound up coming up with the name to our company. Oscorp.”

“That was—” Peter shakes his head. “That was the two of you? Both of you?”

“Both of us,” Otto says.

“Jesus,” Peter says. He’s always known Oscorp even if he wasn’t really familiar with Osborn. He’s known all too well, even if he’d rather not. The building is large and ugly in the middle of Manhattan, pulsing purple at sundown and all throughout the night. It looks like an alien spaceship. And Peter knows what an alien spaceship looks like.

“We were inseparable, but then he—he changed,” Otto says, a haunted look in his eyes. “Once we were out of college and running Oscorp, Norman changed and he changed quickly, and not for the better. He was willing to take risks that I—that I never would have even thought of, that I didn’t sanction and I—after the incident, I just—I couldn’t be there anymore, I couldn’t be a part of his insanity, despite what he was going through.”

Peter can’t even question any of that before Otto keeps talking.

“So I left, in exchange for funding. Which, apparently, he thinks he’s given to me long enough.” He sucks in a breath and makes a fist, looks like he wants to slam it into the table. He’s shaking and Peter worries about what the hell is going on here. Otto looks up at him, and for the first time since Osborn left, the anger is relenting, making way to vulnerability and sadness. “Our work, yours and mine…it wasn’t just for the Colonel, these people, who need it…it was for me, too.”

Peter feels a little stiff. “What?” he asks. “What do you mean?”

“I have a neuromuscular disease,” Otto says, looking away. “It’ll eventually deprive me of the use of my limbs, but I—I wanted to create enhanced limbs to keep me going when my body fails. I—I’ve been working on a model for myself,” he says, nodding, a little manic. “Four mechanical tentacles operated from my back and mentally controlled via neural interface—”

“God, Otto,” Peter says, shaking his head and blinking fast. He can’t think. “God, that’s—I’m so, so sorry—”

“Well, it is—”

“Wait—neural interface?” Peter asks. “Otto—I can understand why you want to, I’m—like I said, I’m so sorry, what’s happening to you is awful, but—we are miles away from what you’re picturing with that, it’ll—where we are now, it could potentially impact your mind and personality. Negatively, like…in a really negative way.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Otto says, and Peter can’t read his face. “Without the funding, I can’t finish it anyway.”

~

“So, yeah,” Peter says, shooting an impact web just as one of the taller Devils starts running at him, and it slams him back against the wall. “They went to college together! And all that shit happened! He just rolled up in there, it was like—” He throws another punch. “Like for real speak of the devil!” He snorts. Because he’s beating up Devils right now.

“I knew that guy was a shit,” Tony says. “That’s insane, I never—goddamn I gotta do my research.”

Peter dodges to the side, and this guy with the electric hand things is a real big pain in the ass. Peter runs up the wall and tosses a web bomb down into the crowd from above, watching the webbing explode and capture them all.

“I didn’t know either,” Peter says, grabbing the closest one when he jumps down, launching him at the wall so he sticks there. He breathes hard, grabbing another one and swinging him around so he knocks the rest down like bowling pins. “Otto sounded really upset, it sucks, I don’t know what he’s gonna do. And it’s awful, the disease—”

“Peter—what are you—are you fighting right now? Are you talking to me and fighting at the same time?”

Another group of Devils comes swarming in through the truck loading entrance and Peter sighs. “Yeah, it’s just—I found another one of those Devil warehouse bases and I just wanted to wrap it up and put a bow on it for the cops to come and take care of.”

“God, kid—”

“Listen,” Peter says, tossing another Devil aside, grabbing one by the mask and slamming him into the wall. “I was on the way home when I sniffed them out—this one is way too close to the tower—Lex and 60th, I mean, c’mon—”

“Alright, alright, just—just be careful, let me know when you’re on your way over, May’s already here.”

“Okay, copy that!” Peter says, punching another one in the face.

~

He’s swinging towards the tower after the fight, thinking about how he’s been hitting harder since the bombing. Whenever he encounters these guys he makes sure to give it his all, because they goddamn deserve it. He hopes the cops aren’t easy with them either, when they get there.

He shoots another web, swings a little too close to the ground, and a cab beeps at him. He tries not to read into everybody’s behavior lately, and he can’t stop thinking about what Jameson said. He knows a lot of people listen to his show, and they could be thinking the same way as him. That Spiderman was involved. Peter hates thinking that way, thinking people might actually believe that of him, and he nearly misses the next shot, hitting the edge of a street sign instead. 

He tries to center himself, latching the next web to the corner of the apartment building on his right. It’s getting colder, and as much as he hates having to wear layers, he likes the winter weather. He wishes he could wear the suit all the time, because the heater is better than any jacket he has in his closets.

The bright red A at the base of the tower comes into view, and Peter sighs in relief, speeding up a little bit. 

“ _Call from Captain Watanabe_ ,” Karen says.

“Oh, go ahead and put her through,” Peter says, swinging with one arm, the wind rustling in his ears. He’s ready to go all Spider-cop on her again.

“Spiderman!” she yells. “I need you to listen to me, I’m on my way to your location—”

“Oh, no, I’m not at the warehouse anymore,” Peter says. “Spider-cop has—”

“No, it doesn’t—I can’t get through to them, I don’t have a line yet—which is why I’m coming in person, they don’t know that you—”

And that’s when Peter drops, his web disconnecting from the building he was swinging from. He flails in the air for a second before he rolls to a stop one street away from the tower’s main entrance, and he’s glad he knows how to land well under pressure. He twists around and sees two silver jets hovering above, silently, and before he can make another move, two red ropes come shooting out from the closest jet, wrapping around him and sending electricity through his body.

“Oh _shit_ ,” he groans, through gritted teeth. “Yuri?” he asks. “Yuri, you still there?”

No answer. 

He drops down to his knees, the pain rapidly getting worse, and he squeezes his eyes shut tight.

“Silver bird, we have an SM-one, an SM-one, do you copy?” a voice says, and Peter manages to open his eyes, gasping when he sees at least six guys rappelling down from the jets. They’re dressed in full body armor, all white, with masks that conceal their faces, and they’re all carrying heavy weaponry, pointing their guns at him as soon as they touch down on the ground.

“Hey, guys?” Peter asks, his voice shaking. “Am I in an alternate reality? A—a Star Wars reality? Because this is—this is not something I expected—” He gasps, struggling against the bonds wrapped around him. They keep buzzing, shocking him with electricity. He shakes with the force of it, trying not to fall over.

They surround him, circling around him until they’re right up close, and Peter sees another jet above reveal itself, like it was in stealth mode. It’s bigger than the other two. There are people on the sidewalks, running for cover, hiding behind mailboxes and filming everything.

“Hey!” Tony’s voice yells, from behind them. He sounds pretty far away. “Hey, hey, hey, what the fuck? What the fuck is happening here?”

Peter can hear his footfalls approaching, fast and frantic, and he can hear sirens in the distance too.

“Silver bird, we have a situation—”

“Yeah, you have a situation,” Tony says, closer now, and Peter gasps as Tony breaks through them, unconcerned with their guns and armor, and drops down next to Peter.

“Hey, hey,” Peter says. “Probably not—the best place for you to be—” He groans through another surge of electricity.

Tony looks horrified, his hands hovering around the pulsing electric bonds wound around Peter’s body. He looks up at the others, anger in his eyes. “Let him out of this, you dipshit Stormtroopers, he’s _good_ , he’s not a goddamn threat.”

The sirens get closer and Peter bows his head, struggling to get the hell out of this. It feels like it was made just for him, because he can hardly fight it, he can hardly move, and it hurts so goddamn bad, it feels like he’s been struck by lightning.

“Look at me, Spidey,” Tony says. “Look at me, we’re gonna get you out of this.”

Peter opens his eyes again. His screen is going wonky, static, and he can hear Karen saying half-formed words, not getting anything real out. He sees Tony nodding, panic in his eyes, and he’s texting someone something, Peter can’t see what. He knows May is inside the tower. He knows she’s probably seeing this.

Another person vaults down from the biggest jet and Peter feels dizzy, but he sees that it’s a woman, silver hair, all in white like the other guys. She has guns, too, smaller ones, but one in each hand. She points them at him and Tony.

“Tony, go, go, please—”

“I know you,” Tony says, ignoring him and getting back to his feet. “Sablinova, you’ve got—you’ve gotta let him go.”

“You are not police, Stark,” she says, with a heavy accent as she approaches him. “You do not inform us of threats.”

Peter groans with another surge of electricity, feeling like he’s gonna pass out. “Yeah, I’m—I’m super not into this,” he says, wilting a little bit. “Like, I get it’s our first date, you took a chance, that’s…that’s brave, but I’m—I’m not having a good time here.” He doesn’t even know who the hell he’s talking to. The woman. The Stormtroopers. God. All of them.

A cop car screeches around the corner and Yuri tumbles out of it when it comes to a stop, holding out her hands. “You do _not_ need to apprehend Spiderman,” she says. “You _do not need to_ , he is not on our list, he _works with us_. He is on our side. ”

“You heard that?” Tony asks, gesturing towards her. “There’s your cop. Not a threat.”

“Let him go,” Yuri says.

Sablinova’s brows are furrowed and she sighs, holstering her guns and making a hand gesture to her men. They all pull up their guns and stand aside, and she clicks something on her wrist, making the bonds snap off and fall away. Peter collapses and Tony drops down again, his arms around him. 

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you, bud,” Tony says. 

Peter breathes hard, looking around. Some of the people hanging around are popping their heads up, gathering in groups, and Peter knows this shit isn’t gonna look good on the news later. The Stormtrooper guys are returning back to the jets like nothing ever happened, and Sablinova’s jet comes down lower to retrieve her. 

“No goodbyes?” Peter calls, as Tony helps him to his feet. “We just had an _experience_ , lady—”

The jet speeds away, disappearing into the night along with the other two.

“What the hell is this?” Tony asks Yuri, holding Peter up. “Why are they here?”

“ _Who_ are they here?” Peter asks, knowing how goddamn dumb he sounds, but he doesn’t care. His whole body hurts. 

“That was Silver Sablinova,” Yuri says, with a sigh. “She’s the head of a…really intense Russian security team, the one that you just butted heads with. Silver Sable International.”

“Security team?” Peter asks.

“Osborn hired them,” Yuri says. “They’re setting up checkpoints everywhere, they’re closing off roads, they’ll be at every major event for the foreseeable future.”

Peter winces, shaking his head. 

“We don’t have any say in it, we’re just supposed to listen to them, give them our leads,” Yuri says. “I don’t know why the hell they just targeted you, but we’re lucky they listened to me and let up.” She looks off in the direction they went, shaking her head. “They just arrived earlier, they’re settling in tonight. They’re essentially going to take over the city.”


	6. a swell of support

Peter looks out at Tony, still pacing back and forth in the hallway, yelling into his phone. Peter sighs, tossing his mask over onto his desk, and May rubs his arms up and down. He rests his head on her shoulder, and he can still feel the jolts of electricity shooting through him. 

“You should take a shower and go to bed,” May says, running her fingers through his hair. “You’re all…static.”

“No wonder,” Peter sighs.

“I nearly ran out there with Tony,” May says. “Would have ruined your whole secret in one fell swoop.”

“I feel like those guys are robots, so,” Peter says, straightening back up. “And Miss Russian Whatever probably wouldn’t have noticed or cared. ‘Oh, who’s that? Random boy. Unimportant.’”

“Well, they know to stay away from Spiderman now,” May says, trying to meet his gaze. “And Tony’s taking care of it with—whoever he’s on the phone with.” She sighs and he looks at her, sees the tears in her eyes. He leans in and hugs her and she holds him tight, like she used to do when he was little, and their life without Ben was cold and new. “We’re gonna stay here tonight, but I’ve gotta—get up early, get to the shelter—”

His heart twists a little bit, because they’re still as in the dark about Linard as they were the day of the bombing. 

“But God, I don’t want to leave you,” she says. “I feel like…it’s just all getting so much more difficult, and it’s all on you. And you’re just…everyone’s against you.”

Peter feels himself shaking and she’s shaking too, and she pulls back, cupping his face in her hands. 

“I’m sorry, honey, I just—it’s not true, you’re doing incredible, you have Tony, and I feel like…if things got really crazy, some of the others would come and back you up, I just—it was so hard to watch that happen,” she says, a tear racing down her cheek. 

“I’m okay,” Peter breathes. But he knows it’s true. He swallows hard, nodding at her, touching her hand. He pulls away and walks over towards his dresser, taking out some clothes so he can get the hell out of this suit. “But where the hell is Sam, honestly?” he asks, grabbing a gray t-shirt and his blue checked pajama pants. “You’re dating a goddamn flying solider Avenger and he’s not here to protect you when shit starts blowing up in New York?”

May snorts, raising her eyebrows at him. “You expect him just to follow me around?”

“Yes,” Peter says, petulantly.

May shakes her head at him. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon.” She walks over, kissing him on the cheek. “Get a shower. Get some _rest_. You coming to the shelter tomorrow after school?”

“Yeah,” Peter says, thinking of Otto. They don’t usually meet tomorrow anyways, but Peter doesn’t know what to do anymore after what happened with Osborn. He needs to talk to him, needs to come up with a game plan.

“Alright, honey,” she says. “I’ll see you then.”

~

He has strange dreams. He can’t remember most of them, but he remembers twisting and turning in the night, blearily catching every hour whenever he opens his eyes. The dreams are full of darkness, his paranoia piercing them. He sees himself broken. Spent. Unable to finish what he started.

He wakes up for good when his alarm goes off. He set it a little earlier than normal so he wouldn’t have to rush out of here to get to school, but he’s still tired down to his bones.

“ _Mr. Parker_ ,” Friday says. “ _Could you meet Boss in his office? He asked me to summon you when you woke up._ ”

Peter rubs at his eyes, trying to focus. “Yeah,” he says. “He’s in there now?”

“ _Yes, he is._ ”

Peter swings his legs over the side of the bed. “On my way.”

~

Happy is standing in the doorway when Peter finally makes it to the office, and he turns around when he hears him approaching, holding up his bowl of cereal in greeting. 

“Hey, kid,” he says. “You doing alright?”

“Hey, Happy,” Peter says, rubbing his arm. It’s still a little sore from what he dealt with yesterday, but he figures it could be a lot worse. “Yeah, I’m okay. You?”

“I’m not the one that’s been targeted by the Russian mafia,” Happy says. 

Peter walks inside the room, sees Tony sitting in front of his wall of screens, typing rapidly. 

“Mafia,” Tony scoffs. 

“That’s what they sound like,” Happy says, leaning against the wall, shrugging. 

Peter sees a tray full of breakfast food, including French toast and pancakes and fruit and bacon and pretty much everything Tony knows Peter likes. He smiles to himself, taking a piece of bacon and stopping behind the computer chair.

“What’s all this?” he asks.

“Nothing on Linard, yet,” Tony says, still typing, and document after document comes up on the screen, a bar on the bottom filling up as Tony saves it all to a jump drive. “But I found Devil’s Breath.”

“Really?” Peter asks, his eyes wide. 

“Seems like it was this top secret project to create a very specific drug.” He gestures towards the screens, where Peter sees DNA, lists and lists of trials. “Devil’s Breath is a nickname, the original code for it was GR27. The initial objective was to pair AI controlled CRISPR genome editing with AI-controlled gRNA to identify and replace genetic mutations and errors. You know what that means.”

“I sure as shit don’t,” Happy says.

Peter takes a bite of his bacon. “It could cure any genetic disease. Wow—wow. Why would the devils want that? Doesn’t seem like their MO.”

“Yeah, it didn’t work out like it was supposed to,” Tony says. “The viral delivery mechanism incorrectly targets the immune system. Subjects that get infected are highly contagious. In its current form, it’s a goddamn bio-weapon. And guess who commissioned the whole goddamn thing?”

“Osborn,” Peter says, his heart beating wildly. 

“Bingo,” Tony says. 

Chills run through Peter’s body and he shakes his head, feeling a little sick. He walks over and sits on the couch, not wanting to eat the bacon anymore but still holding it like an idiot.

“There isn’t much on its origins, why he commissioned it, from who or when. Most of that info is gone. I got so far as to find out there’s one sample in existence,” Tony says. “But I have no idea where it is. Not yet, anyway. It’s enough to start an epidemic.”

Peter lets out a wavering breath. “We have to find it before they do,” he says. “If they haven’t found it already.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, nodding. “I’m sticking on the case. I’ve also read reports about people going ‘negative’ around the city, like Linard and the bomb guy did, so it kinda seems like mind control. Who knows how the hell he does it, from a distance, after touching them once, after getting one of his goons to touch them…I don’t know. But they get real crazy and punchy when it happens, police can barely take them down.”

Peter closes his eyes, trying to process that information. Random people in New York, turning into Linard’s weapons. It’s almost too much to take.

Tony taps his hand on his chair. “I’m—I’m sorry to spring all this on you before school, but I—I wanted you to know.”

“Thanks,” Peter says, chewing on his lower lip. “Yeah, yeah, I’m—I’m glad that you did.”

~

Peter can barely concentrate in class. Can barely listen to whatever the hell Ned and MJ are rattling on about at lunch, and he misses a question in Trig and Flash makes fun of him for what feels like forever. He hit four Sable checkpoints on the way to school, watched those assholes patting everybody down, detaining them, holding people and their cars to the side until they decided to let them go. 

There’s too much on their fucking plates for Sable to be making it worse.

He knows he should be thinking about college. Should be thinking about his future. But he can’t think of anything but all the hell that could rain down on New York if he doesn’t do the right thing. It makes his bones ache, to think about it all. He feels older than he is, feels fucking ancient, and he doesn’t know what to do. 

He feels guilty about Otto too, a nagging kind of guilt that makes him worry about the details. How long he has until the disease starts immobilizing him, how it’s already affecting him, how long he’s known, if he was ever going to tell Peter without Osborn forcing it out. Peter wonders if he’s been working on the neural interface on the side, the mechanical tentacles—and that shit sounds scary. Peter can’t even picture that.

“Hey,” MJ’s voice says. “You okay, nerd?”

Peter clears his throat, keys back in. He’s about five steps from the front door in the main hallway, and she’s across from him, her eyes narrowed.

“Yeah, yeah,” Peter says, wiping his eyes.

“Looked like you were zoning out there,” she says. He’s gotten to know her more since sophomore year, they’ve hung out enough for him to be able to read her expressions, even when she doesn’t want him to. She’s let her guard down with him, which felt like sort of a personal victory, but he can’t talk about any of this stuff with her. He can’t even find it in himself to discuss it with Ned, and Ned knows Peter’s Spiderman. 

“Yeah,” Peter says, laughing a little bit. He thinks about asking her out to a movie this weekend, or maybe lunch at Taco King, but he knows he’s got no real spare time with this kind of shit going on. “You’re not taking that bus again, right?” he asks.

She smiles. “ _That_ bus,” she says. “No, my dad’s getting me. You sure you’re good?”

“I’m good,” he says. “I’ll text you later, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Don’t get hit by another cab.” She gives him a knowing look and yeah, maybe she is more _knowing_ than he’d rather, but he chooses to live in denial a little bit longer so he doesn’t have another issue on his plate.

She pushes the door open and leaves before either of them can say anything else.

~

“Peter,” Otto’s voice says, after the third ring. “Everything alright? I wasn’t expecting to hear from you today.”

“I just—I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Peter says, stopping at the crosswalk as cars speed through it, holding the phone to his ear. It’s getting colder and he one-handedly adjusts his coat around his shoulders, shivering. “Wanted to see if I could, I don’t know, uh—do anything? To help you out?”

“Oh, don’t worry about me, Peter,” Otto says. “I’ve—I’ll figure things out.”

Peter sighs. He feels something in his gut about this, but he doesn’t know how to fix it, doesn’t know how to approach it, doesn’t know what he thinks is happening. Otto is sick, that’s what happening. But, for some reason, Peter feels like he has some control over it. _Is this like that thing I have with death?_ He has to realize his powers don’t work that way. As much as he may want to solve problems like this, unsolvable problems, problems solved by people with a completely different skill set than he has, he’s gotta—put himself in his place. Sometimes, as much as he may want to…he can’t help.

“Are you still in the lab?” Peter asks.

“I’m—I’m still working, yes,” Otto says. “I need to make some adjustments, but I—I’ve got some things I need to finish, before Norman completely runs me out. Don’t worry about me, Peter. What you’ve done, in our time together—you’ve made things possible that I didn’t ever think were possible.”

Peter scoffs, walking across the street. “You never needed me,” he says. “You’re a genius, you know that.” There’s a bunch of tents set up on the other side of the road, and he would wander over there to distract himself if he wasn’t on the way to the shelter. 

“You see things,” Otto says. “You gave me ideas I wouldn’t have gotten if you weren’t around, half of the things we worked on wouldn’t run without your input. Don’t forget that.”

This feels a little bit like a goodbye and Peter’s heart is rattling in his chest. “Listen, don’t worry about paying me,” he says, swerving around a fallen trash can. “I can still work with you, however you…manage to keep on, without Norman’s grants. I wanna keep helping.” 

He remembers what Otto said about the neural interface, and Peter can see circuits collapsing, voltage spikes, side effects that neither one of them can figure out until it’s too late. Seizures, short and long term memory loss, limbic degradation, the neural web not isolating Otto’s motor neurons, affecting other parts of his brain—

Peter stops walking, leaning against the wall outside a jewelry store. “I just wanna help you with what you’re working on,” he says.

“You have been helping me with it,” Otto says, slowly. “All along.”

Peter blows out a breath. 

“I’m fine,” Otto says. “But I’ve gotta run just now, thanks for calling, and I’ll—I’ll see you soon, I’m sure.”

“Alright—bye,” Peter says.

“Goodbye, Peter.”

Peter hangs up and stuffs his phone into his pocket, watching people go by, all bundled up, talking to each other, rushing to their destinations. There’s a Sable checkpoint that he can see three streets away, their walkie talkies loud and intrusive to an already noisy city. He watches the agents walk around confidently, detaining anyone they can, and anger boils in his throat. A truck turns the corner, plastered with anti-Osborn stickers, and on its back window is painted _WHO WILL STOP THE DEVILS?_ in bright red letters.

He sighs again, and keeps walking.

He’s gotta tell May about Linard.

~

Peter’s heart nearly stops when he sees who’s behind the front counter when he reaches the shelter. Miles looks up at him with quick recognition when he approaches, and he smiles sheepishly.

“Peter, right?” he asks. “May’s your aunt?”

“Yeah,” Peter says, blinking fast, a little breathless. “Miles, what are you, uh—what are you doing here?”

“So maybe I was a creep,” Miles says, shrugging. “Maybe I, uh—looked you up after we talked at the…uh, yeah, I saw that your aunt co-runs this place and that it needed volunteers and I just…well, it felt like a good distraction. I started...” He looks at his watch. “Since school got out! But I called here yesterday about it. Asking about….if she still needed help. Yeah.” He clears his throat.

“Miles, that’s awesome,” Peter says. He looks up when he hears a bit of a commotion inside the day room, more voices than he usually hears even when all the beds are full. The door slams open behind him and two more people run in, rushing past him and the front desk altogether.

“That’s just Jason and uh, uh—Angela,” Miles says, nodding, tapping on his temple. “They checked in about an hour ago, uh—two of the many that are getting super—super caught up in what’s happening right now.”

“What’s happening right now?” Peter asks. 

Miles widens his eyes, scoots forward a little bit in his rolling chair. “Uh—I’m trying to hang up here, so I don’t…fanboy too much and embarrass myself.”

Peter narrows his gaze, looks into the day room again. Everything pretty much looks the same, except that there are a lot of people gathered in the sitting room, so much that he can’t even see the entrance of the sitting room at all.

“Go look,” Miles says, scooting further way so he’s in front of the computer. “I’ve got some stuff to do anyways, May gave me a list, uh…she’s so cool, man. To be friends with…those kinds of people.”

“I’ll go check it out,” Peter says, already getting an idea of who’s here hanging out with May. “Just page me on the overhead if you need anything, okay?”

“Sure, sure,” Miles says, smiling.

F.E.A.S.T is set up kind of like a really nice hostel, the main day room full of bunk beds, chess tables, corners with couches and TVs, a few rolling racks with labeled clothing sitting here and there. The room is flanked by the kitchen, the bathrooms and showers, the cafeteria, two sitting rooms and a big laundry room in the back. There are stairs in both corners leading up to the offices, the chapel and two classrooms where they have vendors come in every Wednesday and Friday to teach skills and help the residents write resumes, deal with job interviews, etc. 

The growing group in front of him is overflowing out into the day room from the sitting room beside it, and since the walls are glass people are circling around it, plastering themselves against each other like the eight wonders of the world are in there on display for their viewing pleasure. 

“Excuse me,” Peter says, pushing through the crowd. “Excuse me, guys, just trying to—May’s in there, right?”

“Peter,” a woman named Gloria says, close to the door. “I can’t believe your aunt is friends with them!”

Peter laughs a little bit, nodding at her. “I can only guess who’s in there…”

“Peter knows Tony Stark, G!” Another woman says, off to the side. “Of course May is friends with them!”

“What?” Gloria exclaims, as Peter wedges himself between two guys in big coats. “You know—how did I not know that?”

“Hah, yeah, I…I know him,” Peter says, two steps closer to getting into the room. He’s proud of being close to Tony but he hasn’t exactly been advertising it lately, his paranoia and very real fear of what’s out there stopping him when he starts to talk about him to anybody that isn’t in their inner circle. 

He hears Gloria and the other woman still hollering back and forth about Tony to each other when he finally breaks into the room. He sees Steve, Sam, Clint and Natasha all there with May, entertaining another group of residents that were lucky enough to get front row seats to a gathering of some Avengers right here in Chinatown. Peter stares, his mouth open, because he wasn’t exactly expecting them all to be here. He was expecting Sam, he would have been ready to kill Sam if he wasn’t here, and he thought maybe one of the others would have come back with him, not…all of them. If Thor was here, Peter would probably be on the floor. So it’s good Thor isn’t here.

“Oh, there he is, there he is,” Sam says, looking up when he finally sees Peter standing there. 

“Oh, hi, honey,” May says, getting up.

“Hey kid,” Natasha says, smirking at him.

“Oh good,” Clint says, slapping his knees and getting to his feet. “Thought Sam was gonna go on telling his exaggerated stories for the rest of the damn day.”

“We love the stories,” one of the women says, sitting on the couch in front of them.

“Well, unfortunately, guys,” Steve says, getting up too, walking over to Peter and slinging an arm around his shoulders. “We need to take Mr. Parker here upstairs. Catch up with his progress in school, job searches, college decisions…important stuff.”

They all start clamoring and Peter blows out a breath, looking up at Steve. Steve gives him a half smile, clapping him on the arm.

~

It takes them a good ten minutes to back out of the day room and up the stairs, dodging questions and saying goodbyes until they finally shut themselves up in May’s office.

“We’re not really gonna talk about college, are we?” Peter asks.

“We should,” Steve says, with a sigh.

“But we’re not going to,” Natasha says, sinking into the chair in front of May’s desk.

Peter sighs, leaning against the wall by the door. 

“Having some problems, Pete? Need some help?” Sam asks, standing next to May with his arms crossed. “Because, from your texts, it sounds like you’re having some problems.”

“Oh, you were getting those texts?” Peter asks. “I wasn’t sure.”

“Yeah, he gets all antsy every time,” Clint says. 

“Good,” Peter says.

“Peter,” May says, warningly. “C’mon.”

Peter sighs again. He closes the blinds so the insanity downstairs doesn’t carry itself up here, and the Linard thing weighing on his mind is almost crushing him now, since he’s here, with them, and Linard’s office is dark and looming right beside May’s. He catches sight of the family portrait of himself, May and Ben perched on May’s desk. That day in Bryant Park, with the churros and hot chocolate. He still remembers. There’s a picture of him and May with Tony tacked to the cork board behind her desk, that time they bet Tony onto the carousel. Both photos remind him of what he needs to be focusing on.

“Yeah,” he says. “I do…I do need help.” Part of him feels like a failure, but the rest of him feels relieved that they’re here to support him. 

“So, tell us what you know and we’ll tell you what we’ve found out,” Steve says, encouragingly.

Peter nods, wishing Tony was here too. He wonders if he knows that they’re here. He must, because he knows everything. Peter tries to prepare himself in the small amount of time he has to prepare. “May, uh,” he says, his voice wavering. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you this in front of an audience, but…they need to know too. If they don’t already know.”

“What is it, honey?” she asks, concern in her eyes.

“You know Tony and I were at the bombing. Well, uh, I felt something going on,” he says, looking around at all of them. “It was worse than I’ve ever really felt anything like that and…I started going towards something, where the feeling was taking me, and I…I saw your boss. I saw Linard.”

May narrows her eyes at him. “He was there?” she asks.

“He was and—and it was—he made it happen.”

There’s silence for a second, and Steve looks like he already knew. 

“What do you mean?” she asks, softly.

Peter swallows hard. “Uh, I couldn’t tell what was going on, but he—he knocked out two of these guards at the barrier down the street and then he—he was focused on the stairs, where—where Davis was giving his speech, close to where Osborn was and he just—it was like he changed. Like….the negative of a photograph. He went completely black and white, his whole body, his clothes, and it was like he was…surging with energy.”

“That’s what happened to the guy with the bombs,” May says, staring off at a point behind Peter’s head. “Are you—are you saying—”

“He enhanced, somehow. He was making it happen,” Peter says, trying to be strong. “He was—he was in charge, there was no doubt about it.”

May stares off, shaking her head.

“It matches up with what we know, May,” Steve says, and Sam wraps his arm around May’s waist.

“How can—how can this be?” she asks, looking around at them. “That’s not the man I know, that’s not—not the man that opened this place.”

“Tony and I weren’t sure if it was like…a split personality kind of thing, we…we don’t know. But it was him.” Peter hangs his head, like it’s his fault.

“He’s sent out waves of negative energy around the city,” Natasha says. “Clint and I experienced it in person on our way over here.”

“Nearly knocked me right out,” Clint says, shaking his head.

“Who?” Peter asks. “I think Tony mentioned something about this—”

“Just these two guys,” Clint says. “We were passing them in the alleyway when they just—went negative, and started throwing punches.”

“There have been sixty-two reports of this phenomenon since the bombing,” Sam says. “Right now we’re trying to trace it around the city and find Linard, but we haven’t hit on anything yet.”

May lets out another wavering sigh, and Peter wishes he had been able to stop this before it even started. 

“That’s his office next door, right?” Natasha asks. 

“Yeah,” May says. “It’s been locked since he left, I—come to think of it, I think I’ve only been in there once since I started here, I—I haven’t really gotten a good look at it, I can’t remember details.”

“He hasn’t been back since the bombing, right?” Natasha asks, sitting up straighter, like she’s getting ready to do something.

“No,” May says. She leans into Sam, and he tugs her closer.

“Tasha. He could have people watching,” Steve says, raising his eyebrows.

“Spiders are stealthy,” Natasha says, smiling at Peter.

~

Turns out, Tony isn’t the only one inventing shit at all hours, and Peter crawls along the dusty vents, stopping for a second to adjust the new glasses on his face.

“ _Don’t touch ‘em too much, kid,_ ” Sam says, over the com in his ear. “ _You know the four of us together aren’t anywhere near Tony level with this stuff. Those things are a prototype, they might snap under your sticky strong spider fingers._ ”

“I know how to control myself, Samuel,” Peter says, and he holds up his middle finger in front of his face so Sam can see it through the camera lenses on the glasses.

“ _Peter_ ,” May warns.

Peter blows out a breath and keeps going. “Sorry, May.”

“ _Okay, looking at the blueprints,_ ” Steve says. “ _Keep going about…looks like five feet or so, and then turn left._ ”

“Wish I could have gotten up here closer to the office,” Peter says, coughing. “It’s so dusty. Someone’s gonna hear me sneezing.”

“ _Someone definitely would have seen you going in, short stack,_ ” Clint says. “ _That broom closet was the only good cover._ ”

“ _We’re spies, I thought you trusted us on this kinda stuff by now?_ ” Natasha asks.

“Uh huh, uh huh.” He keeps going, turns left when Steve said to, and once he’s about three feet into the next air shaft he looks down into the nearest grate and sees…something that’s decidedly not a hallway below him. “Um. Are you guys seeing this?”

“ _Wait_ ,” Steve says. “ _That shouldn’t be there. It’s not on the blueprints._ ”

Peter peers down, hoping the camera is focusing. The room on the other side of the grate is dark, only lit by a small light in the corner, and he can’t see much, a couple desks and a corkboard full of what looks like magazine clippings and newspaper sections.

“ _That must be some kind of hidden room,_ ” Natasha says. “ _You’re right behind the office._ ”

“ _Jesus_ ,” May says.

“ _Can you drop down in?_ ” Clint asks.

Peter tries to press on the grate, and it feels like it’s locked. “I can probably break it, but then he’ll know someone’s been in here.”

“ _I don’t think he’s coming back here, kid,_ ” Sam says. “ _We’re just trying to get some kind of evidence against him, see if he left anything behind that can tell us what the hell he’s gonna do next, or where._ ”

Peter thinks about the Devil’s Breath problem, and swallows hard. He presses hard on the grate until the lock snaps and it falls open, and he jumps down.

“ _Uh, yeah,_ ” Sam says. “ _Definitely an evil lair._ ”

“You aren’t kidding,” Peter says, chills running up and down his arms. It doesn’t look like any other room in the shelter—it has steel reinforced walls, wires going up and down everywhere, and it kinda worries Peter that this place is rigged to explode. But he didn’t see anything in the vents that would lead him to that conclusion, and he kinda hopes his spidey sense would be going off the charts crazy if there were bombs here, like it did at City Hall. 

His goddamn spidey sense is always going off now. He’s gotta learn to read the new levels.

“ _We’re recording, Peter,_ ” Steve says. “ _Take a quick, good look and then come back. That place doesn’t look too good._ ”

“Alright,” Peter says.

His heart is beating wildly. There’s a desk directly in front of him with a picture of a couple and a child, posing in what looks like a park somewhere that’s definitely not New York. He thinks it might be Europe, but he’s not sure. They look like a normal family. The picture is stuck in a frame haphazardly, but it looks ripped and crumpled at the corners. 

“ _I think that’s Linard,_ ” May says. “ _The boy, that’s—that’s him, I know his face._ ”

“Are his parents still around?” Peter asks, trying to get a good shot of the photo with his glasses before he moves past it, to the cork board behind it. 

“ _I’m not sure,_ ” May says. “ _I’ve never met them._ ”

“Whoa,” Peter says, looking at the cork board. “Everything here is about Osborn. Guess we’re like a million percent sure he’s the target.” He looks at all the headlines. 

_HOW DID OSBORN DO IT?_

_OSBORN ANNOUNCES REELECTION_

_OSBORN RETURNS TO WORK AFTER WIFE’S DEATH_

_OPINION: OSBORN’S ECONOMIC PLAN WILL WORSEN POVERTY_

_OSBORN-FISK CONNECTION? INSIDERS SPEAK OUT_

“Looks like Oscorp lost a lawsuit about improper clinical trials years ago,” Peter says, breathing hard.

“ _I haven’t heard about that,_ ” Sam says. “ _And I’m pretty up on them._ ”

“ _Same here,_ ” Clint says.

“ _Smells like a cover-up,_ ” Natasha says.

Peter looks at the whole thing slowly and carefully, and then walks over to the last thing in the room, a desk in the corner where a computer sits on the password screen.

“ _Think you can use your genius skills to hack into that thing?_ ” Sam asks.

He sounds like he has doubts and Peter sighs. “You know I can,” he says.

“ _Alright, big man._ ”

“ _Sam, stop teasing him,_ ” May says. 

“ _Sorry, sorry._ ”

Peter chews on his bottom lip as he starts the process, quickly finding the back door and running a script to get in. He types commands fast as he can, tasting blood and sucking it away. Finally, the security goes down and the desktop presents itself, with only one folder labeled _GR27._

“That’s Devil’s Breath,” Peter says. “Tony told me that this morning.”

“ _Us too,_ ” Steve says.

Peter double clicks on the folder and it opens up with hundreds of PDFs, photos, and one big video file. “Oh my God,” he whispers. 

“ _Tell me you’ve got that jump drive on you, kid,_ ” Clint says.

“Always,” Peter says, reaching into his back pocket. “It’s on my keys.” He swallows the lump in his throat and grabs the drive, quickly plugging it into the slot in the laptop. His metal Iron Man keychain knocks hard against the desk and Peter sucks at his lower lip again as he starts transferring files, tonguing the cut he made. “No one’s around, right?” he asks, quickly adjusting the glasses as they slip down his nose.

“ _Doesn’t look like it,_ ” Sam says. “ _But I’m afraid to go back out there._ ”

“You’re afraid of a bunch of your fans?” Peter asks, watching the progress bar fill up. “You’re supposed to be an Avenger. How did you manage to defeat Thanos if a bunch of homeless people scare you?”

Sam huffs in Peter’s ear.

“ _I’ll go keep an eye out,_ ” May says. “ _No one’s gonna be flocking around me._ ”

That makes Peter nervous, because if someone does realize what he’s doing and decides to slam up in here, she’s gonna be the first line of defense.

“Ugh, Sam, go with her,” Peter says. “You’re probably the least exciting of the four of you guys anyways.”

“ _You know you love me,_ ” Sam says. “ _You know you adore me._ ”

“ _No one adores you,_ ” Natasha says.

“Alright,” Peter says, once all the files are copied. “I’ve got it. I’m coming back out.” He yanks the drive out of the computer and sets it to the password screen again. He stuffs his keys into his back pocket.

When he takes a step back he feels something click under his heel, and the sinking in his gut is just like that day at City Hall. He can hear the crackling before he sees it, before it happens, and he leaps up to the ceiling before the wires light up with electricity, sparks flying everywhere. 

“ _Peter!_ ” Steve exclaims. “ _Are you—are you alright?_ ”

“Uh, uh…” Peter looks around. The floor is steaming with electricity and Peter knows if he jumps down there, he’ll get fried. He’s lucky he’s got sticky fingers. “I’m fine. I can—I can leave the way I came in, but I—definitely shouldn’t leave it like this.”

“ _Burn room,_ ” Natasha says. “ _Meant to get rid of the evidence._ ”

“Wait a sec,” Peter says. He looks around, sees the wires stemming from a large electrical box in the corner beside the Osborn cork board. Peter shakes his web shooter on his left wrist—he can only shoot a couple different webs with the shooters not connected to the suit, but thankfully, he has electric webs as one of his options. He shoots four right into the box and shorts it out, and the sparks fade. He still thinks, from the burn marks on the walls, that someone would know there was a breach, and he sighs to himself. 

“ _Looks okay,_ ” Clint says. “ _Good job._ ”

Peter clicks his tongue, pulling himself back up into the vents.

~

They decide to take the drive back to the tower to deal with, so they can get Tony in on it, but May says she’s gonna stay behind at the shelter.

“You sure?” Peter asks, standing out front in the cold air. People are taking notice of the others, and the clamoring on the sidewalk is starting to get louder.

“Yeah,” May says. “This place needs me right now, and Sam’s gonna stay with me, so you got your wish there.”

Sam stands beside her, arms crossed over his chest. “I’m gonna do some laundry up in here. Maybe fix a couple TVs. Heard the one in the day room was giving you problems.”

“It was _not_ giving me problems—” Peter starts, but May reaches out and puts her hands on both of their arms.

“You two have got to stop,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, I need to keep an eye on Miles too. He’s doing a great job so far, but I want to—be there if he needs any help.”

“I’ll stop back by later,” Peter says, making plans for when he’s nearly done with patrolling.

“Alright, sweetie,” she says, leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek.

“Yeah, sweetie,” Sam says, and before Peter can stop him he zips in and kisses Peter’s other cheek, laughing. Peter swats him away, but he can’t keep from smiling, despite the insanity all around them. 

“You’re such a loser,” Peter says.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “You too.”

~

“Nice of a bunch of full grown superheroes to send a kid into a goddamn burn room,” Tony says, taking Peter’s keys, glaring at all the rest of them as he approaches his computer. 

“I had it,” Peter says, though he appreciates the concern.

“He’s gonna be eighteen in August,” Natasha says. “He’s also Spiderman. Stronger than Steve, remember?”

Steve shrugs, but he’s nodding. Peter remembers that day fondly, remembers the look of pride on Tony’s face.

“Just because we found out Peter can lift more than Steve can doesn’t mean—”

“Let’s focus on the task at hand here,” Clint says, stepping in between them.

Tony looks a little heated and Peter watches as Steve approaches him, putting a tentative hand on his shoulder. In all the time that Peter’s seen them together since the end of the world, they seem to have created some kind of unspoken language between them, emotions and full thoughts passed between looks and gestures. Steve raises his eyebrows, and Tony blows out a breath, nodding. 

“I know you worry about your kid,” Natasha says. “But—”

“No, you’re right,” Tony says, wiping at his eyes and turning away from them, slipping out of Steve’s grasp. “Let’s, uh—let’s look at this thing.”

They all settle down in a sort of uneasy silence as Tony plugs in the drive, and Peter sees him notice the Iron Man keychain, a small smile tugging at his mouth. He clears his throat and sits down in the desk chair, and the folder comes up on the big screen. 

“God, there’s a lot to unpack here,” Tony says, scrolling through it all.

Peter watches the files fly by. “What’s that one—did that say Fisk?”

“Lemme see,” Tony says. He scrolls up, a little slower, and there’s a file named _FISK CONTRACT_. He double clicks and a PDF takes up the screen. They all read it in silence and it starts to dawn on Peter what he’s actually seeing here. 

“My God,” Steve whispers. “Osborn—commissioned Fisk?”

It’s a contract between Oscorp and Fisk, opening up a confidential lab in which to work on a top secret project—developing GR-27. 

“It looks like it was completely off the books,” Clint says, as Peter scans over both signatures, Osborn’s and Fisk’s. “Jesus, they were working together—Osborn knew what he was doing was…off, so he got one of the worst goddamn crime lords to hide it.” He runs a hand through his hair. 

“That’s a good file for us to have,” Tony says. “Nice blackmail material.”

Peter wonders if there was a specific reason Osborn was trying to synthesize this drug, and why he was so secretive about it in the first place.

They find out that Linard bought small companies all around the city—shipping companies, recycling companies, old warehouses, a lot of the places where Peter ran into the Devils and took them out. They find profiles of a lot of Osborn’s aides, the people in his cabinet, the public works guy who detonated the bombs. They find blueprints of all kinds of places, all over New York, and it makes Peter feel sick to his stomach. 

They find a file that details the effects of Devil’s Breath in its current form on all the sample groups, and with every new word Peter gets visions of the horrifying possibilities.

“The only known sample of Devil’s Breath is housed in the lower labs of Manhattan’s Oscorp facility,” Tony reads. “There we go.”

Peter sets his jaw. “We have to go there and get it before Linard does,” he says.

“Osborn’s gonna deny everything and prosecute anyone who tries to throw him under the bus,” Steve says.

“He can try,” Peter says.

“We’ve gotta give all this over to your lady cop friend,” Tony says, looking over his shoulder at Peter.

Peter stares at him. In the back of his mind he’s already planning on breaking into Oscorp, searching for the Devil’s Breath himself. He has to, he has to get it.

“I see it in your eyes and I get you,” Tony says firmly, twisting to face him head on. “But we need—we need to be delicate with this. Osborn, he’s—he’s a diabolical man, he knows what’s coming, he’s got these goddamn Stormtroopers everywhere, we need to—we need to try and do this with everyone watching. With the police.” His eyes cut over to Steve. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “We need to be careful.”

Natasha sighs like she agrees with Peter, but she isn’t looking at him.

“Okay, Pete?” Tony asks. “Text Yuri, tell her you’ve got all kinds of juicy info you need to give her.”

“They’re gonna need warrants—” Natasha starts.

“Can you imagine what could happen if Norman catches one of us breaking in?” Tony asks. “Catches _Spiderman_? What if he’s got the Devil’s Breath in his hands when they catch him? Shit, you can worry about them holding him, giving him a fight, but imagine that goddamn scenario. He could pin it on him. People are already trying to blame him for the bombing.”

“He could try,” Peter says again, his heart hammering.

“He’s powerful,” Steve says. “And it’s getting worse. Look what’s going on with the city.”

Peter sits back in his seat and blows out a breath.

“What’s that video file?” Clint asks. “Top corner there.”

Tony turns back around, and Peter sees what he’s referring to. It’s labeled _INCIDENT._ Tony double clicks on it, and it opens, filling up the screen. It’s fuzzy, going in and out, and the date on the bottom reads _07-19-1986_. It’s all in black and white and there are three people on screen, a woman, a man, and a little boy in what looks like a lab chair.

“They look like…that picture, we saw earlier,” Natasha says. “The one in Linard’s secret room.”

“I think…I think that is them,” Steve says. “I think that’s him and his parents.”

Peter hardly blinks.

A subtitle appears on the screen that says _THIRD CLINICAL TRIAL_ and fades as quickly as it appeared.

A younger Norman Osborn walks into the frame, and pats the father on the shoulder. “Now, we’ll be right next door,” he says. He turns his attention to young Linard. “Just relax and…let the medicine do its work.”

“Are you sure he’s ready?” another, familiar voice asks, from off screen. “I thought we were going to wait to take this step.”

“He’s ready,” Osborn says. “I’m positive.”

He walks away as Linard’s parents speak in French to him, and Peter watches as Osborn slips into a room with a glass window, where another man is standing. Peter’s breath catches in his throat. 

“That’s…that’s Otto,” he says. “With Osborn. That’s my boss.”

“Did you know they worked together?” Natasha asks. 

“Yeah, I…I pretty much just found out,” Peter says.

They all watch as things seem normal, for a minute, but then Linard starts to shake, and seize, looking wild-eyed at his parents. They start yelling in broken English, alternating between panicking and trying to soothe their son. Peter can hear his own heart in his ears, can feel it pounding against his chest. He watches as Otto tries to rush into the lab, watches as Osborn grabs his arm and yanks him back.

Then it happens.

An explosion, stemming from Linard himself, a wave of toxic negative energy that swarms over the room, overtaking everything, tossing the camera violently. 

It wipes his parents out. Gone. Like they were never even there.

Peter feels dizzy. Like he’s gonna pass out.

Linard still sits there, chest heaving, negative, like he was at City Hall. Otto and Osborn’s silhouettes are still there in the window, standing completely still.

Peter hears Otto’s voice. 

“What have you done?”

The screen cuts to black and they all sit there for what feels like forever. Peter’s eyes are straining and he’s shaking, and Tony slowly turns around to look at him.

“They created him,” Peter says. “They—they created Linard.” He cracks his jaw, looks away. “They, they—that’s—that has to be when Otto—when he left, he mentioned—an incident, something that he—something that happened that he didn’t agree with.”

Everything that’s happened is because of this. What they just saw.

“He’s taking revenge,” Steve says.

“Alright,” Tony says. “Uh—I think we’ve seen enough.”

~

Yuri comes by, collects the flash drive, after they’ve made all the copies they think they’ll need. Peter doesn’t go and meet her because he can’t put the suit on, he can hardly do anything save for haunt the hallways up by his room, drifting around in a state of shock. Everything feels so big, so impossible, despite the fact that they’ve faced bigger, defeated worse. He doesn’t know why all this is hitting him so hard. He looks out the window and sees Sable’s checkpoints, lit up in blue at almost every other traffic light that he can see from here.

He feels like his city is breaking apart. This has been festering under the surface for longer than he likes to imagine, a rancid wound that never healed, that might have never had a chance at healing because of who was put in power, because of Fisk’s hand around the throat of everyone that lives here. But Fisk was right. Once he left, chaos broke loose, and a different kind of evil took hold. One that was born of sorrow. One fueled by revenge. 

“Hey,” Tony’s voice says, from behind him. “You okay?”

Peter didn’t even hear him coming, and it’s easy to hear him approaching, nowadays. He’s gotta get out of his own head.

“I gotta go back out,” Peter says, fast. “I gotta—I told May I’d be back around, and I gotta—I gotta go patrol.” He clears his throat. “I was looking on Twitter and apparently the Sable guys have been getting rough with people.”

“Pete.” Tony touches his shoulder, gently turns him around.

Peter’s breath hitches and sometimes he gets like this, when there’s too much attention on him and he’s trying to hold something in. Like a concerned gaze from someone he loves is ripping the fear right out of him, making him talk about it. “I don’t think I’m capable of…handling this,” Peter says. 

“You are,” Tony says, gripping his shoulder a little tighter. “Listen, uh—before all that, sorry for—acting crazy, about you going in the vents, getting the info, I just—that’s not about you, it’s about me. I don’t want to make you doubt yourself, that’s the last thing I want. You’re capable of anything, kid. And you know that.”

“You’re not making me doubt myself,” Peter says, looking down at their feet, Tony’s cane pressed to the ground. “All this is, it’s just—I don’t know.”

“I do know,” Tony says. “I know how it looks, but you—you can do this, you can deal with it. It’s gonna be okay.”

Peter chews on his lower lip. “I can’t face it head on,” he says, and he hates how he sounds small, younger than he is. “I don’t know why. It feels like it’s mine, all mine, my responsibility, even though they’re here now and I just…” He can’t explain himself. He thinks of Davis. He thinks of Miles, May. Everyone at the shelter. Everyone in the city. He already failed once.

Everything was alright, for a while. Why couldn’t it have stayed that way?

“I’ll get into a suit if you need me to,” Tony says, quietly. “If you need me to back you up. I will.”

That sends a wave of fear through Peter’s body. “No,” he says. “You’re—no.” _You need to stay safe._ “You have a daughter on the way. You have a life now, you’re done with all this.”

“C’mon, Pete, use those smarts I know you have,” Tony says, letting go of him and walking over to the window. “You’re part of my life too. A big part. If you need me, I’m there.”

~

The last thing Peter expects to do on his patrol that night is save Miles from a hoard of muggers, but that’s exactly what he runs into when he turns onto Mulberry. He doesn’t see it right away but he hears Miles’s voice, hears the taunting, can feel the fear. And before he even thinks about his next move he swings in that direction, hoping to God the kid isn’t hurt.

“Hey, back off!” Miles yells, and Peter spots him, sees him get pushed into the wall.

Peter takes a quick look, assesses the situation. 

“Karen, web bomb,” he whispers. “Then impact when I’m closer.”

“ _Gotcha._ ”

Peter vaults through the fire escape on the side of the building, aims and shoots, webbing up all four attackers. He lands, punches the one in the red jacket, launching him into the air. He shoots an impact web at him, webbing him to the building a couple floors up. He roundhouse kicks the second one with the stupid hair, sends him flying. He elbows the next one in the face, kicks him in the stomach, shoots another impact web and sticks him to the ground. The last one is holding a baseball bat. He looks at Peter, horror stricken, and right as he’s trying to run away Peter trips him—the guy knocks himself in the face with his own weapon, and promptly passes out face down in a rain puddle.

Peter turns him over so he doesn’t drown.

He turns his attention to Miles. “You okay, kid?” Peter asks, trying to change his voice a little bit so Miles doesn’t recognize it.

“Oh my God!” Miles says, his hands clasped in front of him. “Oh my God, Oh my God!”

Peter smiles a little bit to himself. 

“You’re—you’re the amazing Spiderman! The spectacular Spiderman!”

“Nice adjectives,” Peter says. “You should take the bus home.”

Miles is nodding frantically. “You’re way cooler than buses.” He winces at himself. “I mean. But. Wait, I mean, yes. You are, but that was just—a dumb thing to say. But you totally are.”

Peter snorts. “Can I walk you to the bus stop?” He’d wait with him there, but he feels like the longer he hangs around, the more likely he is to reveal himself, considering the damn mood he’s in. 

Miles’s mouth drops open. “Oh—definitely, yes. Yes, let’s—walk. Hang out. Spiderman, hanging out with—he’s hanging out with me. Oh man.”

“C’mon, bud,” Peter says.

~

May sits in the lawn chair on the roof of the shelter and stares up at him. Peter’s own chair is sitting untouched next to her, because he can’t stop pacing. He feels like something is on the horizon. He knows there is—he knows, after all they figured out earlier, that something is coming. He can see Oscorp from here. All seems well, quiet. But it’s nothing but uneasiness in Peter’s head. The night seems darker.

“Was he okay?” May asks.

“Yeah,” Peter says, probably wearing a groove in the roof as he goes back and forth. “Probably gonna have a bruise on his cheek but I got there before anything worse happened. Poor kid loses his dad and then these dickheads try and mug him.”

“Sounds like he got a kick out of meeting Spiderman,” May says, smiling. 

“Yeah,” Peter says. “At least there’s that.”

“He had a good day today,” May says. “He said he’ll be back tomorrow, early in the morning.”

“Good,” Peter says. “I’m glad it worked out.” He hates talking to May through the mask, but he can never be sure someone isn’t gonna burst in on them up here.

“I’m gonna stay at the apartment tonight with Sam so I can get here early too,” May says. “There’s still…there’s still a lot to do.”

He looks down at her, the faraway look on her face. “I’m sorry all this happened,” Peter says. “With Linard. I’m just—I’m sorry. For the whole thing.”

“None of it is your fault, sweetheart,” May says, getting up and approaching him. “From what you said about that video, it seems like this all comes down to Norman Osborn. A horrible accident, something Linard just—let consume him. It’s terrible, it’s—it’s awful, hard to face, for both of us, but it’s—it’s in no way your fault. His own enhanced negativity and need for revenge is fueling his decisions.”

Peter nods. May cups his face, and then leans in, hugging him. 

“I’ll be okay,” she says. “I’ll probably get out of here by midday tomorrow, and then I’ll head over to the tower to meet you after school.”

“Alright,” Peter says, and sighs, hugging her back. 

~

He heads home after that, hovers around the Sable checkpoints on the way to make sure they don’t pull some shit. Everyone else is staying at the tower for the foreseeable future, which does make Peter feel a little bit more secure, and they hang out in the living room and try to act like things are normal. They talk about Steve’s painting, Tony’s cooking, the weird jobs Clint and Natasha have been taking lately. They talk about the baby, they all coo over Pepper’s stomach. They argue about what the baby’s name is gonna be, and Pepper gives Peter that secret smile, because he already knows.

Peter checks his phone obsessively, for anything from Yuri. But nothing ever comes.

He’s in the middle of a fitful sleep that night when someone shakes him awake. He opens his eyes with a start, and sees Tony sitting on the side of his bed.

He’s seen that look in his eyes before. Tony doesn’t apologize, and for a moment, he doesn’t say anything. Like he’s trying to drag out this moment before he breaks the news of whatever it is he has to say.

Peter looks over at his digital clock. It’s a little after three in the morning.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, sitting up. “It’s not May, is it? Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Tony croaks. “She’s with Sam, they’re—they’re okay.” He swallows hard, his eyes darting around. It’s rare, to see Tony in a situation that he doesn’t know how to handle. It scares Peter to death. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks again. “What’s happening? Are you okay? Is it—is it Pepper?”

“She’s fine, I’m—I’m fine,” he says, sighing. “There have been—Devil breakouts all over the city. Taking over whole streets, battling with Sable, starting fires, it’s been—it’s been pure insanity, the reports started coming in about half an hour ago. The police are—they’re overrun.”

“Half—half an hour?” Peter stutters, his mouth going dry. “This has been going on for half an hour and it’s already—that bad?”

“We’re all gonna talk, try and—figure out what to do,” Tony says. He looks down at his hands in his lap. “But that’s not—that’s not the worst of it.”

Peter feels fucking sick, and he stares at him, feeling like his world is turning upside down. He shakes his head in question, because he can’t find the words. 

“There’s been a massive breakout at The Raft,” Tony says, meeting Peter’s eyes. “They’re trying to contain it, but it’s—it’s bad. We’re inches away from all the worst bad guys rolling up Park Avenue.”

Scorpion. Electro. Vulture. Fisk. All the enhanced they’ve put away for the past twenty years. Rapists, mass murderers. Psychos and lunatics. They’re close to a war in the middle of New York.

“I’ve gotta go there,” Peter says, breathless, fear coursing through his veins, but determination right alongside it. “I’ve gotta stop them.”


	7. straw, meet camel

Peter walks through the hallways in a stupor of sleep, fear, determination, too many emotions building and building on each other with every new step he takes. Tony keeps his arm around him as they go, his cane hitting the floor with a heavy thud. Peter remembers how he refused to use it in the beginning, how he’d buckle under the weight of his pain whenever he tried to walk without it.

It used to make things easier, when someone would walk beside him. Just like this.

They all meet in the living room and it feels surreal, seeing them all there in pajamas and messy hair. It reminds him of the time right after they defeated Thanos, when recovery was their primary goal, recovery and being together. They were banged up, exhausted, hardly changing clothes day to day, but they always made it out here. Slumped on the couches, huddled together, their shared pain and relief all fueling the others to breathe another day.

Now, there’s a high pitched tone going off in his ears. He watches as Tony and Steve work together to send everybody off to the Devil breakouts, sending Natasha herself to Oscorp to go after the Devil’s Breath. Peter only catches every other word, because he feels like he’s small, inside his own head, and he can only hear that high pitched sound, and his own breathing, shallow and panicked.

He gets up from his spot beside Tony.

“I’m heading to The Raft,” he says, and turns to leave the room.

He briefly hears Tony say something to the others, and then he hears his frenzied footsteps rush after him just as he’s reaching the stairs. 

“Hey, Pete—”

“I’m going,” Peter says, his heart in his throat. “I have to, I’ve gotta—contain it before—” He shakes his head—he doesn’t even know how bad it is already. It might be beyond fixing.

“Listen, listen,” Tony says, and he struggles to get around Peter, not-so-swiftly cutting him off on the third stair. “I know you’re going. I know. But you need to wait.”

“For what?” Peter asks, his eyes wide.

“Tony!” a familiar voice says, from down behind them. 

Tony blows out a breath, peering around Peter. “For that,” he says. 

Peter turns around and sees Rhodey approaching them, and he looks ready to fight.

“Hey, Parker,” Rhodey says, walking up and stopping alongside them. He turns, looks at Tony. “You’re really messing up with this parenting thing, Tony. It’s way past his bedtime.”

Peter rolls his eyes.

“If I can’t go with you, he’s going to,” Tony says. “Just took his sweet time getting here.”

“I wasn’t planning on New York going to hell in a handbasket,” Rhodey says. “Some people are, you know, out living their lives.”

Peter chews on the inside of his cheek. “You have your suit here?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Rhodey says, looking at him. “What you think, I’m gonna run in there in my street clothes?”

“Never know,” Peter says. 

“Take care of him,” Tony says, looking at Rhodey. He blows out a breath and gets a peculiar look on his face—Peter knows what’s behind it, but he knows he’s safer here, and he’s glad he’s not going.

“Take care of each other,” Tony says.

~

They put coms in their ears and suit up, moving as fast as they can. Rhodey flies, carrying Peter over to the prison on the bay by an industrial-strength length of webbing. They can already see the chaos unfolding at the Raft, fires and explosions and what looks like an electrical storm. 

“ _Still don’t know why they put that thing right next to the city,_ ” Rhodey says.

Peter looks up at him, the way the War Machine armor cuts through the night sky. “Think that might have a little bit more to do with you than me,” he says.

“ _Shit, I put in my two cents,_ ” Rhodey says. “ _Nobody listens to me when they should._ ”

Peter swallows hard. They’re probably only like ten minutes out, and it’s strange, to know the exact moment when a fight is going to start, the horror coursing through his veins as they hurdle towards it. He looks up at Rhodey again, the wind whipping past him. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says. “I’m glad—I’m glad we’re—we’re backing each other up.”

“ _I’m backing you up, short stuff,_ ” Rhodey says. “ _I bet you could take ‘em all on yourself, since that’s what you’ve been doing since we got things back to normal. But Tony wouldn’t let me keep living unless I went with you._ ”

Peter smiles to himself. Rhodey dips a little bit and Peter’s feet almost skim the water. “I think he’s having a hard time with this whole retirement thing.”

“ _You ain’t kidding_ ,” Rhodey says, as they get closer and closer. “ _I had to talk him down off a ledge earlier. I was already planning on coming to back you up, but he was right there with me, dusting off old suits and nanotech and just about losing his damn mind._ ”

Something pulls at Peter’s heart, and he hates this too, mostly because of how much it hurts Tony. Yeah, he’s worried about him constantly, but he knows Tony should be in these fights, whether Peter wants him there or not. 

“What’d you say to him?” Peter asks.

“ _Had to get kinda mean,_ ” Rhodey says. “ _You know he’s pissed we can’t fix him the way we fixed me. It just…isn’t the same kind of injury. Not everybody’s gonna get shot by an all-powerful alien being and live to talk about it._ ”

Even though he’s on the bench, Peter does realize that the very nature of Tony’s injury and how he’s powering through it makes him stronger than all of them. 

There are helicopters a little higher up than Rhodey is flying, heading towards the prison. They’re almost there. Seconds away.

“ _Alright, kid,_ ” Rhodey says, looking down at him. “ _How you wanna do it?_ ”

“I go low, you go high, we meet in the middle?” Peter asks. 

“ _Sounds good,_ ” Rhodey says. “ _Keep safe._ ”

“You too,” Peter says. And then he lets go of the web, launching himself forward so he lands just inches from the edge of the island where the Raft is contained, just on the other side of the high, electrified fence. It’s clearly not on anymore, which isn’t a good sign.

The lightning is rocketing up into the sky, clinging to the helicopter pad and everything around it. Peter knows who that probably is, and he starts forward, already catching sight of a few escaped inmates blowing shit up right inside the entrance to the building. They’re all wearing shock vests, because the guys that are locked up here are usually enhanced or just pure evil, and they aren’t beyond needing a little shock to get them back in line. Peter sees that they’re still wearing the vests, but usually they’re lit up red, and now they’re not lit up at all.

“Guys, guys,” Peter says, launching himself into what looks like one of their armories. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be in here! You don’t want to get in trouble, do you?”

He made sure he was full up on webs, hooked up to resupply just in case anything ran out. He tosses out web bombs, impact webs, concussion blasts like they’re going out of style. He isn’t too worried about these guys—most of them are just unthinking brutes stomping towards him without any intentions other than squashing the bug. Whoever started this breakout, Peter knows they’re planning on using it to gut New York from the inside. Let these guys out, let them dismantle the streets. But, knowing about the Devil breakouts that the others are taking care of, Peter figures this is also a very dangerous distraction. He’s gotta shut it down before it becomes what they want it to be.

He knows who the VIPs of the Raft are, and he rushes to the back of the armory, already taking stock of the broken doors and torn up walls. He wonders how many of them are just destroying shit, well aware of the difficult swim to New York from here. Some of them are probably just wreaking havoc, waiting for someone more capable to get a hold of a boat to bring them to shore.

He keeps going, rolling into an abandoned hallway, the lights above him buzzing in green, on and off. He can hear more voices on the other side of the wall, and he moves in that direction. He dealt with Vulture and Scorpion before the end of the world. Toomes was—well, he has a difficult past with Toomes, for sure. He’ll never forget one second of it. But he didn’t even know who Mac Gargan was until the dude broke out of Ryker’s and tracked him down wearing a scorpion costume. He’d developed some kind of poison, and thanks to Tony, Peter narrowly avoided getting infected. Once they captured him, Peter found out he was one of the bad guys on the Staten Island ferry during his incident, which resulted in his boner for killing Spiderman. They moved both him and Toomes to the Raft after that. Peter always felt strange, sending Liz’s dad to such a terrible prison, and he even tried to argue his case to get him sent somewhere else, since they didn’t want to send him back to Ryker’s. But it never worked. 

He dealt with Rhino and Electro a couple months after he was brought back to life. Rhino is a goddamn lunatic wearing an experimental combat suit who nearly beat Peter to death in a bank heist, and Electro has a similar origin story to Manuel Linard. He was in the middle of a construction accident, which granted him the ability to absorb electricity and deploy it in explosive blasts. Peter tried to fight for him too, fight for the fact that he lost his mind and couldn’t be held accountable for the places he was destroying or the things he was doing, but when Peter took him down, they sent him to the Raft anyway.

And from how it looked up by the helipads, Peter’s sure he’s one of the escapees. 

There are still some inmates in their cells when Peter turns the corner and moves into general population, and they start banging on the bars when they see him, yelling and hurling insults.

“Nice to see you guys too!” Peter yells. There are a couple open, empty cells, and then his spidey sense goes off—he dodges just in time to move out of the way of a goddamn rocket being launched at his head, and he turns, zipping over to the guy in question, knocking him out.

“Don’t think you guys should be playing with weapons like this,” he says, grabbing the rocket launcher and webbing it to the ceiling. “It’s dangerous.”

He’s surrounded again with more lower-level guys and he tosses some web bombs, roundhouse kicking a guy in the face, tossing another one and knocking some more over. His heart is starting to worry him again, speeding up, and he doesn’t know why he’s feeling like this. He’s doing well, he’s mowing through them, he’s got Rhodey here with him helping him narrow them down. 

He hasn’t seen any of the big guys yet. That’s why.

He finishes off this group and catches sight of a big hole on the wall—he swings up, vaulting through it. All the cells are open in here but there’s no one in sight, and practically everything around is warped and destroyed. The ceiling, the bars, the ground, the green flashing lights creating a sickly kind of feeling in his gut.

The same, monotone voice keeps repeating _CATASTROPHIC EVENT OCCURING, FOLLOW PRIMARY EXIT PLAN._

“Rhodey?” he asks, breathing hard as he continues on through the next break in the wall, trying to avoid the jagged pieces. “Can you hear me?”

No response.

There’s another group of prisoners in the next cellblock and he runs through them, webbing them to the walls and knocking them out. His anxiety is only getting worse, rattling through his blood. It’s dark in here, cold, and he can hear voices everywhere. He’s never actually taken a tour and he has no idea where the hell he’s going. 

“ _Do you need help, Peter?_ ” Karen’s voice asks.

“Yes,” he breathes, unsure of why he didn’t think to ask before.

She brings up a map of the prison like she did at Rosemann’s, except it’s a lot bigger, with tons more little red dots representing threats to him. 

“Can you find Rhodey?” Peter asks. “Or the big guys? Like Electro, Toomes…Fisk?”

“ _Rhodey has shielded himself,_ ” Karen says. “ _So I can’t track his movements._ ”

“Oh, oh, smart,” Peter says, and he hears something clang what sounds like a couple of corridors to his right. He looks on the map and sees a cluster of red dots in another big cellblock. “We, uh—we shielded me, right? We’re that smart?”

“ _Mr. Stark made sure to shield you whenever you’re being threatened in the suit,_ ” Karen says.

A warmth rushes through Peter’s chest and he nods to himself. 

“ _It seems Fisk is still in his cell, but I can’t get a lock on Electro or the Vulture or any of the others you’re thinking about,_ ” Karen says. “ _I’m continuing to sweep._ ”

“Okay, thank you,” Peter says, swallowing hard.

He keeps going, trying not to panic, trying to be strong, trying to remember why people trust Spiderman, why those kids wanted him at their elementary school parade. Spiderman is strong, Spiderman knows what he’s doing. Sometimes, Peter wishes he was more like the Spiderman that people think they know. Even Tony sees him as something that Peter doesn’t see himself. He doesn’t know how he gets through this shit. He can hardly ever remember once he’s done.

“ _Call from Captain Watanabe,_ ” Karen says. 

“Put her through,” Peter says, heading towards the big group of bad guys still stagnant on his map.

“ _Spiderman,_ ” Yuri’s voice says. “ _You’re here, right? I thought I saw you coming in with War Machine._ ”

“I’m here, I’m inside,” Peter says. The voices are getting louder and the door in front of him is ripped out of the wall, laying in a crumpled heap a couple feet away.

“ _The warden is trapped on the third floor, in an office in cell block E. You think you can get up there? They’ve got us blocked off._ ”

Karen pulls up the third floor grid before Peter can ask, and he sees what Yuri is talking about. 

“Going there now,” Peter whispers. 

“ _Thank you,_ ” she says, and the call disconnects. 

He debates for a second about going straight there, but he feels like he needs to take out this big group before they target somebody else. He knows there are tons of cops and guards here, and he’s gotta try to protect as many of them as he can, not pick and choose.

He weaves around and moves into a narrow hallway, and the lights are hanging from the ceiling, like something ran into all of them and knocked them down. He checks his webshooters, makes sure the web bombs are ready as the voices get closer and closer, and it almost sounds like they’re taunting someone, he can’t be sure. 

He jumps through the entrance to the cellblock, his spidey sense going insane, and he shoots two web bombs into the crowd of prisoners, who have a cop on the floor by their feet.

“Hey guys, that’s not very nice,” Peter says, shooting an impact web. 

He’s about to shoot another when something stabs him in the back. 

He cries out, gasping and losing his footing. His knees buckle and his body goes stiff as he crumples to the ground, and he can’t get back up, can’t move, can’t—he can barely breathe, a wave of nausea and horrific pain surging through him. He hits the ground face down, pressing his hands to the floor. But he can’t get up. He can’t move.

“ _Peter, you’ve been injected with a neurotoxin,_ ” Karen says.

“Great,” Peter whispers, wincing. “Great, great.”

He feels like his whole body weighs a thousand tons, and he tries to turn himself over as two set of feet approach him. His vision is blotchy and his eyes are burning, and the room seems to turn upside down. 

“How you doing, Pete?” a familiar voice says. 

Toomes. 

Peter just groans, closing his eyes tight.

“Sorry about this, kid, but the big man’s got some big plans, and you’re always forcing yourself into the fire, aren’t you?”

Peter’s mouth is dry and his throat is blistering. He feels sick, he feels goddamn awful. The poison is working fast. He can barely keep his head up.

_He should have thought about this he should have anticipated this goddamnit goddamnit_

He feels a boot on his back, and then someone snickering. The boot applies pressure and Peter gags, nearly puking. He needs to take off the mask. He can’t breathe. A knee lands hard next to his head. 

“Hi, Spider,” Gargan says. “How you liking that? We brewed up something special just for you.”

Peter passes out before he can say anything back.

~

He’s been poisoned before, but not like this. Usually, he’s stumbling back to the tower or his apartment after the fight’s been won, and Tony can help him get back on his feet. But now, when he opens his eyes, the whole world is shaking, tinted a sickly kind of gray. He doesn’t know where he is, but it’s cold, and his whole body feels like it’s asleep, that static from staying in one spot for too long overwhelming him.

He feels a hard kick to his stomach and he gasps, squeezing his eyes shut tight. 

“Let’s get a couple licks in before he gets here,” someone says.

Peter knows that voice, even in this state. “Electro,” he gasps, but before he can say anything else it’s like he’s struck by a bolt of lightning. He screams, seizes, and everything around him goes in and out. It’s there and then it’s not. His vision goes black from eye to eye, and when the electricity stops he crumples, gasping.

The wind is rippling all around and he’s finally able to lift his head, just so, to take in the figures around him. His hearing is getting worse, like he’s in a long tunnel, and it’s probably due to the poison. When he looks at their mouths he can’t hear what they’re saying, but, from what he can see, it’s Electro, Toomes, Scorpion and Rhino, all surrounding him, laying into him, laughing at him. They all look like they have six heads each.

He tries to get up, tries to throw a punch, but he collapses and they laugh some more. Electro hits him with another shock and Peter writhes, aching with the pain of it. He can feel his skin burning, he can almost taste the char. They laugh and the sound mixes together, sounds like some sort of animal he can’t name. It sounds warped and slow—and when he’s trying to get up again, Rhino grabs him and tosses him.

He lands on his back like a limp ragdoll and he can see the moon, seven moons, morphing in and out of each other. Then everyone approaches him again, sinister smiles on their faces. 

“Should I give him another dose?” Gargan asks, kicking him in the ribs.

“As much as we may want to, we can’t kill him,” Electro says, rubbing his hands together. “Boss wouldn’t be happy.”

Peter wants to ask what the hell boss they’re talking about when he realizes that’s stupid, they’ve gotta be referring to Linard. He did this, he broke them out, he got their suits back, and Peter heaves, trying to crawl away. He doesn’t think he can swing in this condition, and there isn’t much to swing from once he gets out on the water. 

He hates himself for even thinking of running when these guys are out and a threat to New York. A threat to May and Tony, the life he’s earned after he got it back.

He grits his teeth and the world is spinning, the sky changing colors, and it almost looks like the bay is a raging ocean, ready to come up and drown them all. He tries to aim his right hand at Toomes, to shoot anything, but they just laugh at him. 

“Shit, he doesn’t even know what the hell he’s looking at,” Toomes says. “It’s almost sad.” He seems to phase in and out on the spot, like he’s see-through. 

“I’d like to squash the pesky spider,” Rhino says, his accent thick, and he kicks Peter again, sending a wave of pain through him. It’s like getting hit with a cement block. Then they get relentless, punching and kicking and electrifying and stabbing and he screams and screams, his limbs too heavy to pick up. He tries to grab onto their feet, tries to fight back but his vision is getting blotchier and blotchier, and his eyes are betraying him. Nothing looks real. Nothing feels real. Nothing but the pain. He’s not Spiderman right now, he’s just Peter Parker, an orphan child with nowhere to go.

Electro shakes him off and shocks him again, and that’s when it feels like the world is quaking. Like something giant is coming their way, and they all stop for it, stepping back from him. The sky continues to phase and he sways, watching, can’t do anything but watch as it climbs up the side of the building and eclipses the light of the moon.

Peter’s heart plummets. He’s sure it’s the poison affecting him, because he can’t be seeing what he’s seeing. He squints, but the image doesn’t change, and his breath catches in his throat.

It can’t be.

It _can’t_ be.

Otto Octavius. Hovering in the air. With four mechanical tentacles, stemming from his back. Just like he said before, he actually—he actually did it. He’s wearing a green suit and googles, and every time the tentacles hit the ground they rattle everyone’s feet, Peter’s whole body. Peter felt sick before but now he’s frozen, staring, and can only think to scramble away when he sees a tentacle coming towards him. But he can’t outrun it, and it grabs him by the ankle, holding him up in the air. 

They’re face to face, and Peter can’t find words.

“Parker,” Otto says, sneering.

Peter can’t dig himself out of his shock. His whole world is rocking back and forth and he shakes his head, no words coming. He knows? He goddamn _knows?_

Otto laughs. “You think you’re a good secret keeper,” he says. “But you’re wrong. Didn’t help that the Vulture already knew your identity.”

Peter can’t think. Can’t breathe. Otto walks them towards the edge of the building and all the blood is rushing to Peter’s head. He drops him and Peter lands hard, one leg dangling off the edge of the roof.

He’s still so dizzy but he turns, looking at him head on. He still can’t believe this. He’s gotta be hallucinating. This can’t be real.

“This—this isn’t you,” he breathes, his throat burning worse than before. “It’s—the neural interface. It’s changing you, it’s—it’s affecting you—”

“All of this,” Otto says, holding out his hands. “It was always inside me. The neural interface, and your work, all your incredible work in the lab—that brought this to life. You inspired me. You helped me. Thank you, Peter.”

“No,” Peter breathes. “No, no.”

“Norman destroyed my life,” Otto says. “Destroyed the future we were meant to make together. He took it all for himself, and left me in the gutter. Every step he takes is a poison to this city, like the poison running through your veins now. It makes the people see things he wants them to see. All he wants is power. He wants to change any outcome that is troublesome to him. That’s why Devil’s Breath exists. His precious Harry.”

Peter shakes his head, narrowing his eyes. His suit is trying to self-correct, but all the images on the screen are red and shaking. He can’t hear Karen’s voice. “Harry?” he asks.

“His son,” Otto says. “He was dealing with the same disease Norman’s wife died of. But instead of going through the normal avenues and channels for a man of his wealth, he decided to turn into a mad scientist. He started testing on animals, and then he moved to children. Sick children.”

Peter can hardly keep up with everything that’s happening here, and he feels like he’s gonna throw up. “I saw—I found out about Linard—”

“So you saw it,” Otto says. “Saw what he did, what he’s capable of. That’s when he took it a step too far. We were no longer partners, his selfishness had taken him beyond redemption. But now…we’ll use his greatest failure against him. We’ll release Devil’s Breath into the city. And all of New York will know who created it.”

“No,” Peter says. “No, no—you can’t, Otto, I can’t—I can’t let you—”

“Linard has been my agent in this all along, Peter,” Otto says. “Following my orders. You have no say in this, you don’t get to choose what I do and don’t do. It’s already done. I’m in charge now.”

“No,” Peter says, gasping, clutching at his side. He coughs hard, blood splattering on the steel rooftop. 

Otto approaches him, with a look Peter has never seen on his face before. Darkness is covering him. He grabs Peter by the ankle with one of the metal tentacles and yanks him up into the air again, and Peter feels like his brain is rattling in his skull.

“Remember,” Otto sneers, quietly. “I know who you are.”

Peter knows what that means. Knows what’s at stake for him if people find out Spiderman’s identity. He’s been worried about what could come of Toomes knowing who he is, but he hoped that being a family man could help his case. As well as being in jail.

But Otto. This Otto—Peter still can’t believe what the hell is happening here. He still isn’t sure if it’s the poison, putting things in his head. He looks at Otto’s face, and something tells him, even in the midst of his stupor, that this is all too real.

Tears spring to Peter’s eyes, and his heart breaks. 

“I can’t—” he sobs, shaking his head. “I can’t—I can’t just stand by and let you do this.”

Otto looks at him with a strange, twisted sense of sympathy, and the tentacle holding him tightens around his ankle. It feels like a burn, seared into his skin.

“Yeah,” Otto says. “That’s what I thought.” He looks behind him, and the others step a little closer. “Is Colonel Rhodes already dead?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Electro says, laughing. “We took care of it.”

“ _No_ ,” Peter gasps, struggling. “No, no, no—”

“I need you to go after Tony Stark,” Otto says. 

“No!” Peter yells, trying to get at him, trying to rip the goggles right off of his face. But he can’t reach him. “No, no, stay away from him—”

“No,” Otto says, yanking him closer. “You’re going to stay out of our way. Or I’ll give them another name you won’t want them to hear.”

Before Peter can panic about that, Otto slams him into the ground with all four tentacles, again and again and again. Peter can taste blood in his mouth, can feel his bones breaking, and he feels like they’re grinding him into a fine dust, with no capacity for thinking or moving or doing anything ever again. 

The sky is on fire, and they toss him into it to burn. 

Then he drops into a deep well, and sinks.


	8. bent and broken

“You’re gone,” Peter slurs, clinging loosely to Rhodey as they shoot through the air. “You’re dead.” The metal feels scuffed and dented.

“I ain’t dead, kid,” Rhodey says. “Hold onto me.”

All Peter sees are fireballs. A blue world. Buildings tearing themselves apart. They’re in space, they’re in space, they’re far away again. His vision is like a broken television on a bad station, and he can’t see Rhodey’s face. Just the suit, the broken suit, and the mask turns into a grimace.

“You’re dead,” Peter breathes, closing his eyes. “You’re dead.”

~

“—we’ve gotta be quick—”

Bright lights. Bright lights and pain. Peter groans, turning his face to the side.

“They’re bringing a bunch of them here, it’s pande-fucking-monium, Rhodey, I was lucky I got Pepper out before the goddamn contagion started—”

“Bruce—”

“I’m so sorry, Peter,” Bruce’s voice whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

Peter turns towards his voice but doesn’t open his eyes. His brain is mixing things up, and he can’t tell what’s where, who’s who, what the hell is going on. It’s all blurring together. Everything hurts. He’s dying. He’s drowning. They’re dead, they’re all dead. The backs of his eyelids are coated with maggots. He’s festering.

“Listen, I know we’re—”

“—they don’t even have an anti-serum yet, Rhodey. We’ve got everybody, _all our people_ here in fucking quarantine, they could die—”

“Tony. You could die.”

“No,” Peter whispers, and his head is pounding. The world is expanding. A wave of darkness. They’re coming for him, they’re gonna take Tony. They’re gonna hurt him too.

“We’ve got you, Peter,” Bruce’s voice says. “You’re okay.”

“You gotta take him and go. They’re gonna come here. They’re coming now.”

~

Peter writhes, feels a familiar hand on his cheek. He doesn’t have a lot of room. He hears sirens. He doesn’t want to open his eyes. He feels like he’s rocketing down the street, but not web-swinging. Everyone can see him. They all know he’s Spiderman. Tentacles string him up in Times Square, his limbs breaking with the force of it. There’s a spotlight on his head for all the world to see.

His sweat burns, and seeps down the back of his neck. Someone is trying to be gentle with him, but it’s a trick, a ruse. There is no gentleness left. There’s just the roof, fists flying, poison, electricity.

“Hey, hey. Shhh. We’re almost there. We’re almost there.”

~

Peter can see them. Everywhere. He stumbles, throws a punch at Toomes, tries to shoot a web at Scorpion, tries to dodge away from Rhino because Rhino is gonna throw him again, and they’re on an even taller building, high up in the sky, fog and fire and fear everywhere. Rhino is gonna throw him and break all of his bones.

Someone grabs him and he stumbles away. Stumbles into Electro, and Electro is priming to shock him again. Peter covers his head with his hands. His powers are gone, he can’t fight back. He has nothing left.

“No, please,” he groans. “Please, please.”

They don’t move their mouths but he can hear them all saying it.

“ _We’re coming for Tony Stark. We’re coming for Tony Stark._ ”

He turns, wrenches himself away from the arms holding him. And then Otto comes out of nowhere. From within the building they’re standing on, and he destroys it, and they’re falling, free-falling, towards the sea of green poison all around them, eating away at New York like an acid.

“ _I’ll send them after her, too,_ ” Otto says, grabbing him with one of the tentacles. “ _I’ll send them after your aunt. They’ll kill them both._ ”

The tentacle squeezes around his torso, threatening to break him in half.

“Peter,” Tony’s voice says, but he sounds far away. “Peter, Peter, I’ve got you, bud. I’ve got you, it’s just me. It’s just me.”

Peter closes his eyes against the pain. Tony isn’t here, he isn’t here. Peter’s alone.

He’s dying.

~

He sees dust now. Dust, floating in the sky like suspended animation. He’s somewhere purple, somewhere with a sunset that looks like Armageddon. Black hole stars. The universe fractured all around him. He’s seen space, he’s in space, space is consuming him. He covers his eyes with his hand but he can still feel the dust landing on his skin.

Ash. His own ashes.

“May,” he breathes. “May.”

“Hey,” a familiar voice says. But not May’s. Tony’s. “You’re okay, Peter.”

“Tony,” Peter breathes. “They’re coming—they’re coming after you. Because of me. Because of me.” He squeezes his eyes shut tight, and he feels a hand on his forehead. Then he feels coolness there, a brief relief.

“Nobody’s coming, kiddo. I’ve got you.”

~

He can see his own dead body, floating in the bay. No one is coming to get him.

~

Peter has a massive headache. His arms feel like jelly and he reaches up, covering his face with his hand. He’s got a pillow behind his head, he can feel that, and a couple blankets covering him. He’s tucked in, like May used to do when he was little and still adjusting to their new life. He feels like he’s been hit by a goddamn train. He has bandages all over his body, and his bones feel fragile, like they could shatter if he moves the wrong way.

Peter groans, shifting a little bit. He sucks in a breath, bracing his hands on the bed.

“Hey, hey, take it easy,” Tony’s voice says, and he places a gentle hand on Peter’s arm. “Don’t move too much.”

The memories come back at the sound of Tony’s voice, and Peter’s eyes snap open.

He can see it all there in Tony’s face. He looks disheveled, dark circles under his eyes, and he winces when Peter looks at him. Peter looks around—they’re in a bedroom Peter doesn’t recognize, with soft blue walls, the curtains drawn. He’s bundled up in the middle of a big bed with soft, burgundy sheets, and Tony is sitting on the edge of it beside him. There’s a couple washcloths on the bedside table, still crumpled and wet, a few tall bottles of medicine, and a radio, currently sitting in silence.

“Where are we?” Peter asks, meeting Tony’s gaze again. He shakes his head, a wave of fear rising along with the memories. “What—Otto—he—all of them, at the Raft—God, he—he knows who I am, he—he’s—there’s something wrong with him, he went crazy, he was threatening you—they wanted to release the Devil’s Breath, did—did they—”

Tony shifts his jaw to the side and there are tears in his eyes. Peter remembers more, and feels his blood run cold.

“Rhodey,” Peter says. “He’s—oh God, they said—”

“He’s okay,” Tony says. “If they said they did something, they were lying. He actually managed to—take down Rhino and Electro on his way out. Before he fished you out of the river. He’s got nine lives, used a couple of ‘em up, but he’s….he’s alive.”

“Good,” Peter says, his shoulders slumping. “Thank God.”

Tony swallows hard. “There’s—Pete, there’s something else.”

Peter chews on the inside of his cheek, staring at him. He tunes in a little more, and he can hear sirens outside. Helicopters. Gunfire. He can hear his own heart in his ears.

“Uh—despite losing Rhino and Electro, uh—Octavius had already gotten ahold of the Devil’s Breath, through—through Linard. They released it together. And—like we knew before, it’s—it’s highly contagious—”

“Who?” Peter croaks. “Who’s….who’s infected?”

“Tasha was at ground zero, so she’s—she’s one of them. Steve, Sam, Clint, your—your friend Miles, and, uh—May too.”

Peter’s world has been cracking since his parents died, slowly at first, faster sometimes, little pieces breaking off one by one. Something splits, when he hears that. Knowing the effects. Knowing what’s possible. Not May, not May, it can’t be, not her. Peter keeps staring at Tony, trying to breathe. He doesn’t know what’s happening in his head, but it feels wrong. Like this moment isn’t real. Like it’s another trick of the poison, still sour in his veins. He feels like he’s paralyzed.

There’s deep concern in Tony’s eyes, but he keeps talking. “We—we set up a containment center at the tower, and they’re all there. Police and hospital staff have been opening centers up all around the city, wherever they can. Bruce and Helen, they were—they’re not infected, they’re taking care of our people. They all fell into comas pretty quickly, but—Bruce and Helen are working around the clock. Norman’s in some undisclosed location, but supposedly, he’s working on an anti-serum.”

Peter looks down, at Tony’s hands, and he sees them shaking. He feels sick, he feels like he’s gonna pass out, and he thinks of Ben’s funeral again. Thinks of all those faces. The way he felt. He can imagine May’s now too. Can imagine her never waking up from her coma. Never speaking to him again. Never telling him that she loves him. He didn’t know, when he was talking to her on the shelter rooftop, that it might be the last time. The thought makes him ill. It sets him off-kilter.

“I need to throw up,” Peter says, grabbing at the covers, his arms aching when he tries to push them off.

“Alright, alright,” Tony says, and when Peter gets his legs over the side of the bed he nearly collapses to the ground, Tony grabbing him around the waist and saving him at the last minute. “You okay?” he asks.

“Bathroom,” Peter sobs, still not knowing where the fuck they are. He covers his mouth with his hand.

“On it,” Tony says. He hauls him back up so he’s essentially carrying Peter off to the right, kicking a door open and slapping the switch on the wall until the lights flicker on. Peter nearly throws himself at the toilet, his knees stinging when he hits the tile, and he hurls, his throat on fire. He hates throwing up, he _hates_ throwing up, and his eyes burn with tears because usually May is sitting by when this happens, soothing him, saying _oh honey, it’s alright, sweetie. It’s alright._

Peter gasps and feels like he’s choking.

Tony rubs his back. “Breathe,” he says. “Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Lemme get you some water, alright?”

Peter doesn’t say anything, and he feels Tony quickly get up, run the tap, and then he’s back again, sitting behind him. Peter sits back, clawing at his throat.

“Here,” Tony says, one hand on his shoulder, the other holding out the water. “Drink a little bit.”

Peter takes it, his hand still shaking as he sips, and he quickly puts it back down before he drops it.

He doesn’t feel strong. He doesn’t feel like Spiderman. He failed. They nearly beat him to death, they released the Devil’s Breath, and now May is infected. She’s dying. They’re all dying. His city is breaking apart.

Peter sobs again and Tony tugs him closer. Peter collapses against him, burying his face in his shoulder. Tony holds him tight, carefully, carding his fingers through his hair.

“I’ve got you,” Tony says. “It’s okay.”

Peter knows Tony isn’t exactly touchy feely with most people, only the few lucky enough to be in his inner circle and not even them sometimes, and Peter is glad he’s broken down all those walls. He feels like a child now, but the embarrassment of the early days is gone, and when he clings to Tony, Tony clings right back.

“Where the hell are we?” Peter breathes, hardly sounding like himself.

“Sam’s little apartment,” Tony says, tentatively.

Peter groans, closing his eyes against Tony’s shirt. “The worst. We’re in his goddamn little love shack for when he goes away with May.”

“Good place to hide.”

“Horrible.”

Tony rubs his back, and Peter tries to breathe. Tries not to think about everything that’s happening right now, including the fact that they’re on the floor of the bathroom of Sam’s place that he’s never wanted to see. Tony pulls back a little bit so he can look at him, one arm still around him and the other on his shoulder.

“Listen,” he says. “They did come after me. Toomes and Gargan themselves, but Rhodey got me and you out of there before they could do any damage or track us. Whatever they injected you with at the Raft, it was made specifically for you. It really messed you up. You were hallucinating for going on fifteen hours.”

Peter lets out a heavy breath, hanging his head. He can’t imagine what the hell that was like to deal with.

“It weakened you significantly, especially with what they did to you,” Tony says, and Peter can tell by the way he’s speaking and the look in his eyes that he’s trying to keep it together.

“Where are they now?” Peter asks. “Otto and the other three.”

“We lost track of them,” Tony says, sadly. “But we figure that they’re gonna go after Osborn.”

“And we don’t know where he is either,” Peter says.

“No,” Tony says, shaking his head. “We’ve got a few leads on him but no way to really check ‘em out. There are Raft escapees all over the city, taking over whole blocks, strong-arming citizens, attacking police. Osborn declared martial law, but to top it all off…” He sighs, gritting his teeth. “To top it all off, fucking Sable declared Spiderman as public enemy number one for some goddamn fucking reason.”

Peter wilts a little bit, anger boiling inside him. “Probably blaming the prison break on me,” he says.

“Something like that.”

Peter covers his face with his hands. His heart aches, his body hurts, he doesn’t know what to do. He feels like his brain still isn’t working right.

“You wanna go lay down?” Tony asks, squeezing his shoulder.

“We need to do something,” Peter breathes, muffled.

“Kid, right now, you need to heal,” Tony says. “They fucked you up.”

“May is dying,” Peter says, pulling his hands back down and looking at him. He wants to sound determined, angry, wants to personify the horror inside him, but instead he sounds small, scared. Like a lost kid.

“I’m not gonna let that happen,” Tony says. “You’re not either. I know you wanna freak out. I freaked out ten times while you were going through the effects of the poison. And you’ve been through hell. But me and you are gonna fix this, you’ve just gotta hold on a little longer, bud. We gotta be in tip top shape. And you know me. Always planning.”

Peter shivers, nodding at him. Tony stares at him for a second, and Peter wonders just how bad he looks.

“You wanna get up?” Tony asks. “Either way, we can’t do anything from the bathroom floor.”

“Just tell me we’re in a guest room,” Peter says, getting teary again. “I don’t wanna be laid up in some bed where—”

“We’re in a guest room,” Tony says. “Scout’s honor.”

“Alright,” Peter says, blowing out a breath. Tony gets a hold of him and helps him to his feet, and Peter gets a quick look at himself in the mirror. He usually doesn’t bruise for too long, especially not fifteen plus hours after a fight, but now there’s black and blue marring his cheek, another one on his forehead, surrounding a stitched-up cut. It felt like his nose was broken and now he’s got the confirmation in the way it looks, twisted and bruised like the rest of his face. His lip is split and he has a broken blood vessel in his left eye, which somehow makes it all look worse. There’s more red there than white.

Tony looks at him closely to make sure he’s ready to start walking, and Peter feels like he might drop to the ground again if Tony wasn’t there to support him. He feels like a living corpse, and his brain can’t properly process everything that’s happened, that’s for sure. Some part of him still hopes that this is a dream, a bad one, and he’ll wake up and find himself back in the apartment, May calling him down for breakfast. He needs it, he needs that to be it, because this is all above his pay grade, this is too close to home, too close to the way it felt when he turned to dust in Tony’s arms. Too close to that feeling of death that clung to him for far too long after he came back to life. Like any minute, skeleton fingers would wind around his throat and drag him down beneath the surface.

Now they’re reaching for May.

Tony gets him back to the bed and helps him back onto it. He looks like he wants to tuck him in, fluff the pillows, but he doesn’t. He just sits there, and stares at him for what feels like a long time.

“Looks bad, huh?” Peter asks.

“I’m just glad you’re awake,” Tony says, his voice breaking slightly. “But the blood in your eye, it’s...it’s throwing me. It makes you look….younger than you are.”

“Weaker too, I bet,” Peter says, bitterly.

“You’re not weak,” Tony says. “They laid a trap for you. They ambushed you.”

“Did Yuri get out alive?” Peter asks, worried about what the answer might be.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “She just took down a whole ring of the escapees in the financial district. She was concerned about you, she reached out.”

Peter nods, glad at least that she’s okay. His throat hurts, and he rubs at the bandage on his wrist. “I feel like...Otto…” He blows out a breath, tears springing to his eyes again. “He, uh—I feel like this is partially...my fault…”

“It’s not,” Tony says, fast. “He made his own decisions. He made his own bed. Whatever this is about, the shit you told me with Norman, the whole Linard thing, I don’t know...you don’t react in this way. He could have fucking run against him for mayor. Not...tried to kill the whole damn city. That’s what an insane person does.”

“I helped him become what he is,” Peter says. “I was constantly leading him to conclusions, working on the circuits, he was using me all along. He used my work to finish off the neural interface and his tentacles. He used me and he finished it off behind my back. He did it for this. And now it’s...it’s twisting his mind, warping his personality. Bringing all the worst stuff to the surface. Nothing of what I thought he was is there anymore.”

“Pete, none of that is your fault and it never will be,” Tony says. “You didn’t know.”

“I should have,” Peter says. He thinks about all those stupid fantasies, introducing Otto to everyone, having him to dinner at the tower. Thinking of him like family.

“Bruce felt like shit,” Tony says, as the sirens outside get louder for a second, speeding by the apartment building. “He’s the one that got you that job.”

“If it’s not my fault, it’s not his either,” Peter says. “This was….this was all under the surface with Otto, until...until recently.” _Until I helped him along._

“There’s no point in the blame game,” Tony says. “Been there, done that.”

Peter sighs. “You said you’re planning?”

“You wanna know my plans?” Tony asks, raising his eyebrows.

“I’ll take anything,” Peter says.

Tony glances off towards the window. “First, we’re gonna get you feeling better again,” he says. “Probably gonna hang here for like a day and a half—”

“God,” Peter says, his throat going tight.

“—but after that, Bruce and I have been tracing the Devil’s Breath’s initial residue to find Doc Ock and his goons, I’ve got an app for the pings on that. Those shitheads, they wore gas masks, but it’s hanging on them in ways they don’t even realize. We’ll find them.”

“And then?” Peter asks.

“We’re gonna be stealthy,” Tony says. “We’re gonna get back to the tower, without any of those fuckers seeing us, fingers crossed. We’re gonna make you a suit our big bads don’t stand a chance against.”

Peter’s the one raising his brows now. “Better than the iron spider?” he asks.

“Better,” Tony says. “And different. They won’t know what hit ‘em.”

Peter sighs again, and tries not to live in hope too heavily. He’s done that before, and the letdown is harder and more brutal every time. He looks up at Tony again. Still here, still with him, despite what he’s left behind. “Pepper’s okay, right?” Peter asks, his heart stuttering a little bit. But he feels like Tony’s demeanor would be way different if she wasn’t.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “I got her out once we realized what was happening, before Sable cut off the city. Should be in Washington by now.”

“I’m sorry you’re not with her,” Peter says, weakly. He feels weak down to his core, and helpless, and he fucking hates that. “I’m sorry you’re...you’re here.”

“Hey,” Tony says, leaning towards him. “You’re my kid. I’m never leaving you on your own if you’re in trouble.”

Peter gives him a watery smile, warmth surging through his chest.

“And look, we get to be pseudo-fugitives together,” Tony says, holding his hands out. “A good bonding experience we haven’t had before.”

Peter smiles slightly, nodding.

“Try and relax,” Tony says, patting his knee. “I’m gonna go scrounge up something from the kitchen. You know how high-end Sam tries to be, so hopefully it’ll be good.”

~

Peter checks himself over, catalogues his bruises and wounds, all the aches he can’t exactly place. He wonders if the poison slowed down his healing, considering how bad he still looks. Tony got him a burner phone, and Peter debates on texting Ned for what feels like forever. He doesn’t know if he’s safe or not, if he thinks Peter’s dead, but now that his identity is in danger, he figures that puts Ned in danger too. So even though it’s killing him, he holds back for now.

Looking through the news instead probably isn’t the best idea, but he does it anyway. Too many fucking people think Spiderman had something to do with the jailbreak, but thankfully, there are a bunch of others trying to talk them down. There are tweet threads outlining the effects of Devil’s Breath, the symptoms, where to go if you think you might be infected. There are people arranging protests at all the Oscorp facilities, lots of news pundits saying this will be the end of Osborn’s career, whether he figures out an anti-serum or not.

Some people tweet about how they’re trapped in their apartments, groups of Raft escapees pounding at their doors. And when the tweets stop, Peter has to try and calm himself down before he pukes again. He wants to help, but he can barely lift his arms.

Tony makes him an unusually big meal—broccoli, peas, asparagus, a sweet potato, and grilled chicken. Peter feels like he’s trying to make up for something, he can’t really tell what.

“Alright, I’m gonna bring it in there,” Tony calls, from the other room. “Lemme just, find a tray or some shit. C’mon, Wilson—”

“I’ll come in there,” Peter says, wanting a bit of normalcy, even though he still hears what sounds like bombs going off outside.

“Kid,” Tony yells. “Don’t worry about it.”

Peter groans, pulling the covers back, and gingerly steps down onto the carpet. He doesn’t exactly wanna see the rest of the apartment, since he can easily picture Sam and May here and he doesn’t wanna think about that right now, but he’s gotta get up, get moving.

He can hear Tony’s hobbled footfalls coming towards him and Peter cracks his jaw before Tony appears in the doorway.

“You got it?” Tony asks, watching him walk.

“I got it,” Peter says. He sucks in a breath and blows it out easy, looking down at his feet. He still feels uneasy, but he can’t just lay around while the world goes to hell. He’s gotta move towards getting back up sometime. As soon as goddamn possible. He looks up at Tony, who seems ready to leap out and catch him if he falls. “Look dad, first steps,” Peter says.

“Beautiful,” Tony says. “You can teach Hannah when the time comes.”

Peter smiles.

~

Peter eats almost all the food Tony puts in front of him, which surprises both of them. He takes note of everything in the apartment—all the weird art, the wall color, the tile and rugs and too-big TV mounted on the wall. He thinks about May and Sam laid up in the tower, along with everybody else.

“Gotta take some of those pills again in a little bit here,” Tony says. “Bruce said they’d help, get you back on your feet. He thought they’d push along your healing, recalibrate it.”

“Okay,” Peter says. He pushes his peas around on his plate. “How far are we from the tower?”

“We’re in the Upper West Side,” Tony says. “This place isn’t in Sam’s name and no one saw us come here, so we’re good. They’re not gonna find us here.”

“I was wondering how long it would take us to get back,” Peter says.

Tony meets his eyes and looks worried. “Uh,” he says. “The roads are all messed up, there are lots of holdups, checkpoints we’ll have to avoid. Probably a little bit of driving, mostly walking. Maybe an hour, depending on—what we hit out there. But I don’t think—”

“I know I’m not ready right now,” Peter says. “But I—I don’t wanna wait until I’m one hundred percent. I can’t, we’ve gotta—we’ve gotta find them. We’ve gotta take them down.”

“I know,” Tony says. “We will. Rhodey’s tracking right now, too. He’s keeping me updated.”

“Nothing yet?” Peter asks.

“Not yet.”

Peter sighs. “When we get back to the tower, we gotta make sure they don’t see us going inside. See you.” He keeps hearing Otto’s voice. _I need you to go after Tony Stark._ “They can’t know we’re there.”

“I have a feeling they don’t think we’ll be coming back,” Tony says. “They just wanted to drive us out, scare you.”

It worked. They did scare him. He didn’t want to lose anyone else he loves, but now he’s in danger of losing everything. Peter chews on his lower lip, going places in his mind he shouldn’t be going. “I think he was right,” Peter breathes.

“Who?” Tony asks, leaning his elbow on the table.

“Fisk,” Peter says. “With what he said, at the end, when they—when they were arresting him. That I’d regret it, that—that the city would crumble without him.”

“That’s bullshit,” Tony says, fire in his eyes. “Like I told you then. There are always going to be dickheads like him claiming they can run things forever, even though they’re strong-arming everybody and their mothers, stealing, killing—” He shakes his head. “There are times of peace, and times of war. This happening has nothing to do with Fisk. He fucking _helped_ it happen, Peter. You know that.”

“Yeah,” Peter croaks.

“You were strong enough to stand up against him,” Tony says. “And you’re strong enough to fight this fight, too. If it’s not one, it’s the other. There’s always gonna be someone, just sometimes—it hits on a larger scale.”

Peter’s heart feels heavy, but he knows Tony is right. “Did he escape too?”

“His ass is still there,” Tony says, smiling. “So that’s one less thing for us to worry about.”

~

Peter tries not to think about May, but his mind keeps finding her. He wonders what the last thing she thought was, before she fell into the coma. He wonders if she’s dreaming of him. He hopes she’s not suffering. He feels sick thinking about it, sicker than he already is. But he keeps taking his pills, trying to push himself.

Tony’s looking at his phone a lot, and Peter worries he’s not telling him everything. But he doesn’t ask, partially because he’s afraid to know, and because he’s sure Tony would tell him if it was anything about May or the others.

Peter feels like it’s been too long. He’s gonna give himself one night of sleep, and then they’ve gotta move. He can’t wait any longer.

Tony is sitting beside him on the bed, and the way Peter’s mind keeps racing is making him sleepy. His head keeps lolling, and finally he rests on Tony’s shoulder. Tony keeps scrolling through the news on his twitter, and then he abruptly pulls up MIT’s website.

Peter sighs. “Tony, the world is exploding,” he says. “I am not talking about college right now.”

“Oh, see that fountain?” Tony says, when he scrolls down a bit and stops on a pristine campus photo. “Some very strange things happened in that fountain. Rhodey and I, we ripped that place up.”

“I bet you were the worst,” Peter says.

“I was,” Tony says, proudly. “I don’t know how he put up with me. I don’t know how he still does.”

Peter sighs, and feels stupid. “I wanna go there because you went there. Because it’s a good school, perfect for me, but…”

“New York,” Tony says. “New York, New York.”

Peter sighs, tiredness sneaking up to meet him. “And you. And May. And my friends. And...Spiderman.” He hears more sirens outside and thinks about all the people that need him, while he’s sitting here, nearly asleep, talking about college. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow. His eyelids are drooping, and he thinks—he hopes—that the aches in his bones are subsiding. He doesn’t even know what the hell time it is. It always feels like it’s dark outside now, with all the smoke in the air.

“You’re a good kid,” Tony says. “With good priorities. Nothing like me.”

Peter is so tired, and he sinks heavier against Tony’s shoulder. “I always wanna be like you,” he mutters, before drifting off.

~

He wakes up slowly to a weak stream of light bleeding through the curtain. He’s still smashed up against Tony’s shoulder, and Tony’s head is resting on his own. He’s still asleep, and Peter blinks, and he sees Tony’s phone on the bed between them, lighting up with notifications. 

Peter sits up, cracking his neck. “Tony,” he croaks, taking the phone and unlocking it.

“Not asleep,” Tony says, abruptly, and when Peter looks at him he’s wiping his eyes and yawning. “Just—resting my eyes.”

Peter would normally rag on him for that one, but he reads the texts and can hardly breathe. “Osborn made the anti-serum,” he says. He looks at Tony again. “That means Otto is gonna go after him, like as soon as possible. As soon as he finds out where he is, he’s gonna go get him and destroy the anti-serum. He won’t let his plan fail.”

Tony looks at him hard. “How are you feeling? And don’t lie to me, kid, I’ll know.”

“How do I look?” Peter asks.

Tony blows out a breath. “Most of the bruises are fading, there’s still a little bit of blood in your eye, but it’s not—not as bad as it was.” He shakes his head, sitting up a little. “How do you _feel_?”

Peter cracks at his wrist, and gingerly gets up off the bed. He tries to catalogue everything like he did before, and he knows he’s not one hundred percent. But that wasn’t what he was expecting. He knew he wouldn’t make it there. He turns around and looks at Tony again. “I feel okay, I—I feel fine. I don’t feel like I’m dying.”

Tony narrows his eyes. 

Peter shakes his head. “Listen, we’re on a timer now. As soon as Norman tries to distribute that anti-serum, Otto is gonna—he’s gonna stop him, and then May—and then May—”

“Okay,” Tony says. “Okay. We’ll go now. But I’m gonna make you a bagel for the road and you’re gonna goddamn eat it.”

~

Peter tests himself in front of the mirror. He does look better, and he can’t really tell if he feels better or if he’s just getting antsy and worried. His spidey sense is coming in the form of terrible stomach aches lately, and he keeps feeling like he’s gonna puke. But he looks at himself in the mirror, tries to gear himself up. No matter how he feels, he can’t just stay here forever. That’s what they want. That’s why they were so relentless, so determined to break him. So he wouldn’t stand in their way. So he has to stand in their way.

After Tony stops hovering around him trying to figure out if he’s too messed up to go, he gets them set up in weird, frumpy outfits and surgical masks, which everyone on the street is wearing now to avoid catching Devil’s Breath. Tony pops a baseball cap on Peter’s head, which, apparently, is essential if you’re going undercover, and puts on one of his own. He stares at Peter for a long time once they’re by the door, and then finally, they head out.

They start out driving, a weird blue Sedan that makes Tony look like a soccer dad when he’s behind the wheel. But there aren’t a lot of cars on the streets, so they decide to ditch the Sedan at the first opportunity. Subways are out, because they’re swarming with Sable officers, and they narrowly avoid checkpoint after checkpoint, mostly due to Peter’s backwards and forwards knowledge of the city.

Peter worries people are gonna notice Tony because of his newly-famous limp, and he worries it’s putting a lot on him once they’re walking. But he doesn’t say anything, because he knows as soon as he brings it up, Tony will bombard him with his own concerns. So they stay close, keep their eyes open, get into crowds if they can. The sky is dark and smoky from all the fires, and it sort of looks like somebody blotted out the sun.

They avoid areas overrun by prisoners, which makes Peter feel sick. He tries to tell himself they’ll take care of them when they’re ready, when they’re prepared, but making a wide berth around their bases and their gunfire goes against everything Peter’s ever stood for. 

Tony braces his hand on Peter’s shoulder, and he can’t tell whether it’s to take some pressure off himself or to try and make Peter feel better. “We’ll get ‘em, kid,” he says. “We’ll get ‘em all.”

~

Tony sends an encrypted message to Rhodey when they’re about a mile out, and, despite the Sable presence around the tower, they sneak into an underground entrance to the tower that Peter didn’t even know existed. Peter helps Tony get down the stairs, then Tony helps him right back, and they both lean on the walls once they’re down there, breathing hard. 

“Fri, we good?” Tony asks, taking his mask off. “Anybody see us go in?”

“ _No hostiles were aware of your entrance. Nice to have you back, Boss._ ”

“Good to be back, despite—circumstances,” Tony says, brushing himself off.

“Where are we—” Peter says, before the lights come up. He sees three of Tony’s cars, the garage office, the storage containers in the corner. “Oh. I didn’t even know there was a way in over here.”

“Yeah, I usually pull the ladder up,” Tony says, extending his cane out again and tapping it on the ground. He blows out a breath and approaches Peter, a strange look on his face. As soon as Peter sees it, he knows what he’s about to say. And he feels sick again. 

“Kid, do you wanna—go see May, before we work on the suit? You can get pretty close, each one of them are in these little pods because they’re so contagious. Makes it easier for Bruce and Helen to work.”

Peter swallows hard, taking his mask off. A wave of fear almost overcomes him, at the thought of seeing her like this. She’s hardly ever sick, rarely gets colds, and it terrifies him to imagine her lying there, in a goddamn coma. He doesn’t know if he can see her like that. He’s so afraid. But he knows he needs to. He wants to. If it was him, she’d be by his side and she wouldn’t leave him, not for a moment. A pang of guilt hits him, and he nods at Tony. “Let’s, uh—I wanna see her now.”

~

It’s rare to see the med bay with more than one or two people in it these days, and even though he knew what he was walking into, it’s shocking to see the amount of destruction that Otto brought to their doorstep. 

They have to put on the special masks Bruce made before they go in, and Peter feels strange and separate with it on his face. Not like putting on his Spiderman mask, but having to protect himself from people he loves. People who are sick, dying. There are at least fifty or sixty people in here, at the least. They’ve got the team, May and Miles separate, at the back of the second level that they rarely have to use. Everyone’s beds are cordoned off like Tony said, and the pods look like blue force fields. He sees Helen standing over Steve, Bruce a few feet away looking at Miles’s vitals, and there are a bunch of other doctors and nurses running around. Peter catches sight of May over in the corner, and his throat goes tight. He leans closer to Tony on instinct, and Bruce turns around. He’s wearing a mask too and his brows are furrowed, something like shame in his eyes.

“Peter,” he says. “I...I can’t help but feel…responsible—”

“You’re not,” Peter croaks. “At all.”

Bruce sighs, looking down at his feet. Peter can hardly look at him, because he can see May from here. So close and so far away at the same time.

“How….how are they?” he asks. His eyes briefly dart over to Miles, and now he’s the one drenched in shame. Everything that’s happened to this kid is Peter’s fault. And now he’s here. Now there’s this, too.

“Uh, there’s—there hasn’t been much change,” Bruce says, and he looks over his shoulder to where May is, probably because Peter is looking over there again, too. “But we’re working around the clock,” Bruce says. “We’re keeping in contact with all the other bases, whatever anybody learns, we share. And Osborn’s figured out the anti-serum, so all we’ve gotta do is hold on until he can make enough to distribute.”

“That’s why we’re back,” Tony says. “We’re gonna—fix the kid up a suit so he can stand against Octavius, in case he makes a play for Norman.”

Bruce stares for a second, and then he nods. “I’m sorry this is all on your shoulders, Peter,” he says. “I’m just...I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Peter says. “I can...I can handle it.” He swallows hard, and looks at May again. “Can I...how close can I get?”

“Right next to the lining of the pod,” Bruce says, looking over his shoulder at her. “Any closer is too dangerous.”

“Okay,” Peter breathes, trying to gear himself up. Tony squeezes his shoulder and Peter looks at him, hoping for a bit of strength, and Tony meets his gaze, nodding. Peter faces forward and moves past the others, everyone else he loves that came here to support him and paid the price for it. His world narrows down, blurry around the edges, and he can only see May.

She’s been there for all his important moments. Since he was small, since his parents were still here, before he became Spiderman. Since before he was important. She was always there. Always. The thought of losing her feels like horror swirling in his gut. He can’t take it, he can’t. He can’t live through it.

He sits down in the chair beside her bed, listens to the steady beat of her heart. He wishes he could reach out and hold her hand. So she’d know he was here. She almost looks like she’s sleeping—and just thinking that reminds him of his nightmares, the caskets, disturbed earth and a new headstone. Tears gather in his eyes and he quickly wipes them away. She’s not dead, she’s not dead. She’s breathing. She’s still here.

“May,” he says, his voice shuddering. “May, I’m...I’m sorry. I’m here, I’m here, I hope you can hear me, and I—God, I’m sorry.”

He chews on his lower lip, watching her. He has to see her eyes again. He has to hug her, feel the way she always holds him, like she can protect him from the world, stop bad things from happening. He needs to hear her voice. They need more movie nights, more harvest festivals, more slipping in the snow. More critiquing Thanksgiving Day parades. More Target runs where she spends ten years in the dollar section. More dinners at the apartment where she cans three recipes before finally deciding on tacos again.

Otto. He wanted to welcome Otto into his life, his family. But Otto—Otto betrayed him. Otto hurt him, Otto did this. Anger rises within him in hot waves. She’s here because of Otto, not because of him. This isn’t his own fault. It was Otto. Otto took advantage of Linard’s accident, Linard’s anger. He took care of the Raft. He infected the city. He put Steve, Miles and the others here. He put May here.

“I’m gonna fix this,” Peter says. “I’m gonna—I’m gonna get you better. I promise.”

~

They start putting together the suit as soon as they get into the workshop. Tony gathers all his strongest materials and they start from scratch with one of his original markups. They make this one bigger and better than anything Peter’s had before, something formidable to fight against the strength of the tentacles, something easy to move in to outmatch their range of motion. Tony puts on music and they barely talk, save for asking for this tool here, type in that command there. Peter’s anger fuels him. He has to take Otto down. He has to save the city, save his family. Save May.

The only thing that stops Peter from working is Rhodey coming down the stairs. He remembers Electro saying Rhodey was dead, remembers that feeling so clearly, and even though he knows he’s probably seen him since then, he was hopped up on the poison and doesn’t remember. He lets out a breath and rushes over to him as he steps off the last stair, and Peter nearly tackles him in a hug.

Rhodey laughs a little bit, hugging him back. “Hey, buddy. Good to see you on your feet.”

Peter pulls back, looking at him. He’s got a black eye and a couple contusions, but he’s still whole. Not sick. “Thanks for taking care of Rhino and Electro. And saving me.”

“Aw, you know,” Rhodey says, patting his shoulder. “Gotta look out for our own. Plus, I owe you for the Carnegie Hall incident.”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “That’s true. Any new news on Osborn?”

“No details yet,” Rhodey says. “We know he’s got the antiserum, but that’s all we know. He’s being cagey, still hiding out, which probably isn’t good for his public opinion notes. No news on the other guys either, but we’re still looking.”

Peter lets out a breath.

“Vibranium chest plate or vibranium helmet?” Tony asks, from behind them. “I’ve only got enough to do one.”

“Chest plate,” Peter says.

“Alright,” Tony says, as they walk back over. They’ve got the full skeleton of the suit laid out, and Tony is working on the outside. “The rest of it is steel alloy and titanium. You’ve got double resupply and I loaded in triple the amount of backup webbing. Kinetic power cells, reactive lenses, combat analyzer, threat sensors, full charge capacitors, the charged outer mesh, and the blast plates we talked about.”

“Souped up,” Rhodey says. 

“Outside should be like an impenetrable shell,” Tony says, looking at Peter. Peter nods at him and Tony nods back, typing in a command to start building the suit surface. He taps his fingers on the table. “You’ll have Karen too.”

“Good,” Peter says, because he knows he needs her.

“ _Boss_ ,” Friday says. “ _There are Sable agents at the front door._ ”

She brings up a screen and they see about six of them, standing there in their armor, with their guns. They’re not squared up for a fight yet, but Peter knows how fast that can change.

“Shit,” Tony breathes. “Assholes.”

“I’ll go deal with them,” Rhodey says. “They keep fucking coming here and harassing us, looking for Spiderman. Just hang here for now and I’ll send a signal if you need to move.”

He heads back up the stairs and the bots get to work on the suit, putting it together piece by piece. Tony grabs his cane and walks over to the plushy chair in the corner, and Peter follows, sitting in the one next to it. The suit sounds perfect, sounds like it can do the job. Peter just hopes _he’ll_ be able to do it.

Tony’s got a weird look on his face, and Peter narrows his eyes. “What’s wrong?” Peter asks. “You okay?”

Tony’s quiet for a second, and Peter starts worrying. After a few long moments, Tony clears his throat, spares Peter a look. He seems like he’s gearing up for something. “This whole damn time,” Tony says. “I’ve sorta been—lying to everyone.”

Peter stares at him. “What do you mean?”

Tony hangs his cane off a hook in the wall and sighs, pursing his lips. “I’ve been telling everybody I can’t be Iron Man anymore, that my leg is just—too fucked up, but it’s not...it’s not true.” He looks at Peter, looks down just as fast. “I mean, my leg is fucked up. In a way that’s much more complicated than what happened to Rhodey. But I can—I can get into a suit. I can do it no problem. I tried, early on.”

“ _When?_ ” Peter asks, leaning forward. “I didn’t know—”

“I didn’t tell you,” Tony says, softly. “I didn’t tell anybody. Not even Pepper.”

Peter shakes his head. He doesn’t understand.

Tony looks up at him again. “I’m afraid,” he says. “Ever since...facing Thanos, coming back, I’ve….I’ve been so afraid, too afraid to be...what I was. I can’t shake it.”

Peter rubs his own wrist, where an ache still throbs. For as long as he can remember, Tony’s been his idol. Everything he wanted to be, all he’s admired. In his eyes, Tony can do anything. He’s seen it. He’s fought alongside him. He knows.

“I know what you mean,” Peter says. “You know I do. But you, you’re—you _are_ Iron Man. No matter what. No matter how much time you take away from the suit, it’ll always be a part of you. And I know you say this to me all the time, but you’re capable of anything. Everything. You’re Tony Stark. You’ve saved the world more times than I can count.”

Tony smiles a little, shaking his head. 

“I understand that fear,” Peter says. “But you’ll always be bigger than it is. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted to be, whether you...want me to be like you or not.”

“You’re better than me,” Tony says.

Peter shakes his head. “Nah. You’re the best superhero there is. You’re stronger than anything that can come at you.”

Then Tony’s phone beeps. He pulls it out of his pocket and Peter leans in to see the flashing news headline. His heart drops.

“Shit,” Tony says. “How the fuck…how the fuck did they slip past us?”

_BREAKING: OTTO OCTAVIUS AND MANUEL LINARD, THE NOTORIOUS MR. NEGATIVE, HAVE TAKEN MAYOR OSBORN HOSTAGE AT THE MANHATTAN OSCORP FACILITY_

“Oh God,” Peter breathes. “The anti-serum—”

“Suit’s almost done,” Tony says, clenching his phone in his hand.

“Then I’m gone,” Peter says, fear gripping him. But there’s a steady determination there, too.

“Then you’re gone,” Tony says, darkly.


	9. the heart of the matter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sick right now but I dragged myself out of bed to post this for you lovely human beings that have stuck with me throughout this journey. Thank you and I love you. Only the epilogue left after this one.

The suit is still built like a Spiderman suit, but on the outside, he’s Iron Man. He’s Iron Man wrapped up in another Iron Man. Peter thinks he could take ten more beatings in this suit like the one he took at the Raft and he’d still be standing. He’d still be fighting.

He looks at himself in the mirror, flexes his fingers. His screen is crisp and clear, it’s easier to jump from gadget to gadget, and it’s so in tune with him that it knows which way he wants to move and when before he knows himself. He can dodge with perfect accuracy. He can see from all angles, so nobody can sneak up on him. There aren’t any weak points, so Scorpion can only poison him if he gets the suit off of him, which isn’t happening. Tony took every precaution, took this situation in his careful grasp and created a suit Peter couldn’t have ever imagined.

He starts back out into the workshop, but he stops in his tracks when he sees—he swallows hard, ducks behind the closest wall, peering around it because—because Tony is getting into a suit. A dark red and gold suit that Peter hasn’t seen before, bulkier than the nanotech, more like the original Iron Man suit. It’s obviously newer and Tony slips into it easily, closing the facemask. The eyes light up.

“Lookin’ good, lookin’ good,” Tony says, and it sends a shock through Peter’s system to hear his voice coming from the suit again. “All systems online?” He nods, getting some kind of answer Peter can’t hear. “Kid needs me. I can’t keep screwing around on the sidelines, so we gotta make sure we’re firing on all cylinders.”

Peter feels dizzy, and he steps back completely out of sight.

“ _Peter_ ,” Karen’s voice says. “ _Are you in distress?_ ”

“He can’t come with me,” Peter breathes. “He can’t.” Visions of all possible futures assault him, and he knows too well what Tony looks like once he’s been broken by a fight he couldn’t beat. He knows the fear in Tony’s heart, the fear he’s trying to withstand so he can help Peter. But Peter can’t lose him, can’t lose May and now Tony too, because he’s not protecting himself the way he’s protecting Peter. Peter knows he’s not because he never is.

Peter can see Otto killing him. Crushing him. And Peter can’t live with it.

“Karen,” Peter breathes. “I need to—get out of here without him seeing me. I need to get ahead of him, I need—a route to Oscorp starting from here. Can you—can you help me?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Karen says. “ _I’ll help you._ ”

~

He’s swinging for ten minutes before Sable spots him. He’s gone stealth, which brings up the reflective panels on the outside of the suit, but it doesn’t make him completely invisible. They’re stationed on almost every other rooftop, and he’d been successfully avoiding them until one of their snipers spotted him.

“Code SM-one,” he hears one call out, as he tries to keep swinging to get the hell away from them, but when he looks behind him he sees that the goddamn assholes have actual jetpacks on, an important detail he somehow missed in all the tweets and news coverage of his least favorite security company. 

“Shit,” he breathes, turning the closest corner and continuing on. He’s not exactly worried about fighting them, but he knows if he’s got them on his tail at Oscorp, they’re gonna have problems. He knows they won’t actually realize that he’s trying to save Osborn, because they’re clearly too dumb for that. “Guys!” he yells, looking over his shoulder again, watching the four of them following him, glowing blue in the dusky twilight. “Listen, I love a game of tag as much as the next guy, but we’re on a bit of a—”

One of them shoots at him, grazes his calf. It didn’t feel like much, more like a penny ricocheting off the side of a building, but then they hit him again, more head-on this time, right in the middle of his back. 

“ _We’ve absorbed the damage, Peter_ ,” Karen says. “ _The suit is still running at 99% capacity, but they are a threat to you nonetheless._ ” She lays out a zoomed-in map of the streets ahead of him, but he doesn’t need it—he drops down into a roll into the closest alleyway behind the record store, kneels down behind the overflowing dumpster.

“Alright,” he whispers, hearing them chattering over their radios to each other, their jetpacks whooshing through the air. “We’re gonna rush out into the street, hopefully most of the general public hasn’t abandoned me yet, and then—”

He hears an undeniable sound. A repulsor blast, another repulsor blast, a couple more scattered around for good measure. Peter breathes hard, continues kneeling, heavy waves of emotion running through him. A bunch of different kinds of emotions—thankfulness, that the Sable guys are gone, fear, that Tony is here. Also relief, that he’s here. Peter doesn’t know how the hell to feel.

The jetpack sounds give way to silence, some rogue gunfire a couple miles away.

“Pete?” Tony’s voice asks. Iron Man’s voice. “Hey, you okay?”

“No,” Peter says, barging around the corner. He guesses he’s choosing angry to begin with. Tony is hovering there in the alleyway and then the suit drops to the ground. “No, no—why did you follow me? Why? Tony—”

“Kid,” Tony says, holding out his hands. “I—”

“I can’t lose you,” Peter says, fast, his vision going blurry with tears. “I can’t, I’ll be worried about you the whole time—”

“Listen,” Tony says, stepping closer. “I’m sorry. I really am. I know you...you’re worried about me, I get it, especially with what’s going on with May right now, but I—” He sighs, and then the face plate lifts up so Peter can see him. There’s sincerity and earnestness in his eyes. “I wasn’t with you for the Raft, and you nearly came home to me in a body bag. I already had to deal with your death once and it nearly broke me, and I just—this has gotten too personal. I can’t send you in alone when I know I can back you up. And you—just earlier—you made me believe I can do this. So, this is kinda your fault.” 

Peter laughs, he can’t help it, and he looks down at their feet.

“I’ll be okay,” Tony says. “I promise.”

Peter tries to breathe normally, pushing down all the conflicting emotions.

“Let’s go, bud,” Tony says. “I’m already here.”

“Fine,” Peter says, swallowing hard, trying to remind himself what he said to Tony before. It is true, he’s capable, but Peter can’t stop the fear from eating away at him. “Can you set up a com?” he asks.

“Uh...yeah, I already did that,” Tony says, the face plate snapping back down.

~

Peter’s still worried, but he doesn’t let it distract him. He does feel safer with Tony at his side, and that feeling only gets stronger when Rhodey flies up alongside them too.

“God, you two are as bad as me a couple years ago,” Peter says.

“ _How’s it feel?_ ” Rhodey asks. “ _You like the constant stress?_ ”

Peter just blows out a scoff, but he’s smiling.

“ _You good, Tony?_ ” Rhodey asks. “ _This isn’t exactly what I was expecting Friday to tell me when she buzzed._ ”

“ _Yeah, I’m good,_ ” Tony says, and Peter looks back. It’s dark now, and there’s still smoke everywhere, but the image of the Iron Man suit cutting through the night brings up memories of times past, before the world changed and turned back again. Tony backing him up will always feel like a strange sort of dream, and despite their closeness now, Peter can’t quite kick that feeling. The shock, at having Iron Man by his side.

They go stealth again when they get a little closer, and all the lights on Oscorp tower have gone low, not the blaring radioactive purple that Peter is used to. He can see Vulture flying around the building, and Scorpion glowing green near the bottom.

“What’d you do with Electro and Rhino, exactly?” Peter asks, looking over at Rhodey.

“ _Let’s just say their cells in the Raft are a lot more secure now,_ ” Rhodey says.

“ _And there won’t be any more breakouts,_ ” Tony says. “ _The Raft is probably the only thing that’s contained right now. Everybody’s focused on the city._ ”

“Good,” Peter says. They’re getting closer, and Peter realizes they don’t exactly have a plan here. He ran out on emotion before, and they ran right after him before anyone could really think about anything. He can’t see Otto or Linard anywhere, and he definitely doesn’t see Osborn. “Karen,” Peter says. “Can you give me a layout of the building?”

It almost instantly appears on his screen. 

“Gimme a second,” Peter says, to Rhodey and Tony. He drops down onto the roof of the nearest office building that isn’t being used as a base for the prisoners or Sable agents, and starts analyzing the map.

“You okay, kid?” Tony asks, touching down beside him. 

“Yeah, I just wanna see...what’s where,” Peter says. He sees the two main red dots on the outside of the building for Vulture and Scorpion, and then a bunch of others around the perimeter—probably Linard’s devils. “Karen, do you know where Otto and Linard are? Osborn?”

“ _Most of the Oscorp employees were out of the building when Otto arrived, as per news reports, save for Osborn himself and a few of his technicians. If my calculations are correct, this particular dot on the 48th floor should be Otto, and this one should be Linard._ ” She highlights two dots and they pulse to differentiate themselves, and there are about three or four green dots, one close to the first dot Karen mentioned. Linard is a couple floors lower than Otto is, and Peter swallows hard, debating on how he should face them. He tries to think critically, review the situation in his head.

Rhodey lands too, and approaches the two of them. “I’m clocking like, fifteen or sixteen of those devil guys,” he says. “But it looks like they’re mostly on the outside.”

“Fri thinks it looks like only Otto, Linard and a couple red shirts on the inside,” Tony says. “His main lab is on the lower level, and I think—I _think_ that’s Linard in there.”

“You think Otto could have left him alone with the anti-serum?” Peter asks. 

“Maybe,” Tony says. “Possibly.”

“Maybe they’re gonna try to do something,” Peter says. “Like a ransom, or, or—I don’t know, destroying it publicly, only using it for people they want to use it for—”

“Let’s go get it before they can pull any of that shit,” Rhodey says. The guns on the back of his suit start to turn and prepare, and he looks at them. “I’ll take care of the dickheads on the outside. Both enhanced assholes, then the rest.”

“You sure?” Peter asks, his heart stuttering a little bit.

“Yeah,” he says. “Big distraction, you two go inside, take out the big guys. I see a...looks like a freight elevator that’s got an entrance on the outside, leads up to those top floors.”

“I see it too,” Peter says, watching as Karen highlights it on the map.

“You guys good with that?”

“I’m good,” Tony says. “Be careful, Rhodes. Keep us updated.”

“Right back atcha,” Rhodey says, before flying off towards Oscorp. 

Peter runs his hand over his throat, and it feels tight, like it’s closing in on itself. He turns towards Tony and Tony steps a little closer to him.

“You ready?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Peter says, focusing on the task at hand. He thinks of everyone, all over the city, that have been affected by this. He thinks of his friends, laid up at the tower. He thinks of May. “Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.”

~

Peter visited Oscorp once. It wasn’t this location, it was the one in Queens, and the visit consisted of a very poorly run tour, too many hallways, and a lab incident that changed the rest of his life. He never went back, for fear of someone finding him out, and he always wondered if they knew somehow, that they had created Spiderman. For the longest time after, he thought scientists would come banging on his door, would try to drag him in for testing, cloning, whatever the hell else they do. But nothing ever happened, and after a while he stopped thinking about it. He avoided Oscorp on purpose, and then it disappeared from his mind. Just another set of buildings, scattered across New York. Part of the skyline.

He never knew anything about Norman to begin with, never sought out information about the man behind the company that gave him his powers and set the path of his future. He never knew about the malpractice that Tony alleged, that sent Otto packing. He blamed the incident on himself, his own stupidity, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But now, after all this, he sees things differently. He knows that Norman uses his wealth to keep his secrets, to make sure that no one knows what mistakes he makes, to make sure that no one even looks into his dealings. Peter saw a lot of doors during that tour, before he found the one he stumbled into. At the time, he wondered what kind of advances they were making, who they were helping. But now, after everything, he wonders what they were hiding. Who they were hurting. 

Oscorp has been in the back of his mind since he became who he is, because he put it there. He shoved it behind a locked door and turned off the lights, buried all its meaning down deep. He’s been blind because he covered his own eyes, and even though he knows Tony would scold him for it, he puts part of the blame for this on himself. He knew what was possible at Oscorp, how things could mutate and change because of their experiments. But he didn’t want to know. He accepted his own fate and moved on, for fear of them trying to take it back, trying to change him more. Keep him to themselves. He should have known there could have been others. And only now, climbing out of the elevator shaft and into these familiar hallways, does he really realize how much he’s been ignoring. He can’t see it all, but he knows it’s there. Too many secrets to keep hiding. 

Part of him doesn’t want to save Norman. Part of him wants to let him burn. But that’s not what Spiderman would do, so Peter can’t do it either. No matter how Spiderman came to be. No matter who made Devil’s Breath. No matter who created Mr. Negative. 

Strangely enough, he doesn’t think that Tony knows how he got his powers, or where. He always clams up when he talks about the why’s and how’s, usually describes it as a freak accident and leaves it at that. He doesn’t think he’s ever said it out loud to anybody but May, when he finally explained it all to her. But, knowing Tony, he probably found out somehow, and hasn’t mentioned it since Peter never did himself. It’s strange, holding something so close to his chest that it starts to disappear into the ether. Like he’s been trying to erase that part of the story, something fuzzy and vague there instead. He’s holding it so close that it even feels hidden from himself a lot of the time, only brought up when he’s faced with it directly. Like now. Oscorp has always just been this looming darkness since he became Spiderman. The purple haze Manhattan headquarters that looks like it could take off into the stars at any moment.

Maybe when they make it to the other side, they’ll talk about it. Maybe his origins will no longer be a boogeyman hiding in his closet, but something that will make him strong in different ways than it already has. Something that will make him a pillar for those who weren’t so lucky. He’s Osborn’s victim too, like Linard is. His story just turned out differently. There could be so many others, ready to boil over with what Osborn did to them. Just like Linard did.

“ _Up ahead_ ,” Tony says, on the com.

All the lights are out. Peter figures there probably weren’t very many people here before the bad guys arrived, considering the state of the city right now. Despite both of them being in heavy iron suits, he and Tony move quietly down the hallway, towards the spot on their map that they think corresponds to Linard.

“ _What are you thinking?_ ” Tony asks. “ _Just go in and jump him?_ ”

Peter slides up against the wall as they turn the corner, and he can see the light pulsing in the room they’re heading for. He remembers that video they watched, what happened to Linard, what Osborn made him do to the people he loved most. Peter tries to imagine that happening to him. It could have. Anything could have. He knows he would be filled with anger too, remorse and misplaced, warped rage. Linard was able to open FEAST, six locations across New York—he’s not Mr. Negative all the time.

Peter swallows hard. “I wanna try to...talk to him.”

Tony looks at him, and even though Peter can’t see his face, he can read the expression behind the mask. “ _You wanna try to...reason with him?_ ”

“I think I can,” Peter says. 

There’s a beat of silence. Then Tony straightening up, and moving to stand behind him. “ _Well, if anyone can, it’s you_ ,” he says. “ _Want me to go in with you or wait here?_ ”

Peter isn’t sure on that right away, but then he thinks about it and he doesn’t really want Tony out of his line of sight, especially with Otto looming around here. Whether he’s Iron Man or not. “Come with me,” Peter says. “Just try to refrain from looking threatening—or more threatening—until—until—”

“ _I get it,_ ” Tony says. “ _Alrighty, ready when you are, Spiderman_.”

Peter nods at him, tries to live in that mindset that Tony has for him, that he has for Tony. They both think the world of each other, and Peter knows they’ve gotta start thinking it of themselves.

Peter watches that red dot on his map. Linard is right there, right on the other side of this door. So many things could go wrong and Peter’s skin crawls with all the possibilities, but he knows it’s now or never. They can’t hang around in the hallway waiting to be found. He reaches for the handle, and sure enough, it’s locked. He breaks it as quietly and as easily as he can, and they move inside fast.

Linard is there, in full-negative mode, and he’s got three frightened-looking Oscorp technicians with him. They all whip around at Peter and Tony’s entrance, and Linard immediately grabs a sword that’s sitting on a rolling table beside him. Instead of what Peter anticipates as an upcoming bout of hand to hand combat, Linard whips the weapon through the air and sends a massive burst of negative energy their way. 

They quickly dodge, Peter to the right and Tony to the left, and then Linard sends another one, this one directly at Peter. Peter rolls out of the way, closer to him, and he knows he’s screwing this up—if he doesn’t save it within the next couple minutes, Linard will keep attacking, Tony might fire to defend Peter, and then he’ll lose his chance.

He quickly retracts his mask, prepping for another launch of toxic energy, acidic and already coating the walls. But Linard stands struck, breathing hard.

“You know me,” Peter says, and they’re only feet away from each other. “I’ve...I’ve seen you at FEAST, we’ve spoken, we…” He shakes his head, trying not to stutter. “I don’t know if Otto told you, who...who I was. Or if you’re just finding out now, but...Mr. Linard, I know this isn’t you.”

Linard just stares at him. “It is me,” he says, his accent thick and the emotion clear in his voice. Peter doesn’t think he knew, he doesn’t think Otto told him. Just the others. He seems rattled. “It is,” Linard repeats. “You don’t know what—”

“I do,” Peter says, briefly looking over at Tony. He looks back again. “I know what Osborn did to you, to your parents. I know, I saw it.”

Linard stares, his throat bobbing. “Then you should understand,” he says. He looks so strange, standing there, inverted. It’s almost like he’s glowing. “My anger has been fueling me since that moment. I would have gone after Octavius too, if he hadn’t told me his plans. I joined with the lesser of two evils.”

“You’re not evil,” Peter says. “Not at heart. Someone who opens up a place like FEAST, all those locations, putting in all that heart and love and time—you’re not evil. This, what they did to you—it’s beyond what someone should have to deal with. It’s influencing you chemically, the same thing is happening to Otto with what he’s done to himself, but you—you had no hand in what happened to you, Mr. Linard.”

Linard grimaces, looks down at the ground. “I’ve been living with this feeling, this—person...for most of my life. I know what I feel, who I am—”

“May knows who you are,” Peter says, willing his voice not to break. “My Aunt, she—she believes in you entirely. She’s been talking about your vision since she started at FEAST, she’s always said you consistently go against the grain and go out of your way to help everyone. Every single person. No matter how hard the case is, no matter how dirty the situation, you were—you were there. You were in the thick of it.”

Linard—he seems like he’s pulsing, now. Like the negative is going in and out, revealing his true face. If only for a moment.

Peter sees one of the technicians move behind him, almost like he’s trying to get him to notice something. Peter doesn’t want to take his attention off Linard, afraid to break the spell, the small chance that he might be getting through to him—but then he sees it. By the technician’s elbow, beside a thick pad of paper and a closed laptop.

A small vial, no larger than Peter’s hand. Labeled “GR-27 ANTISERUM SAMPLE”.

He doesn’t stare at it. He can’t fall apart, not now, not when so much is at stake, not when he’s come so far. He looks at Linard again.

“Is she…” Linard says. “Is…”

“She’s infected,” Peter says, his voice breaking now, and he can’t stop it. He looks over at Tony again, that eternal need to draw strength from him, and Tony steps the smallest bit closer. Peter looks down, tears gathering in his eyes. “She might die,” he says. Then he looks up at again, and Linard is essentially phasing now. Between Mr. Negative, and the man Peter knew at FEAST. Peter sets his jaw. “She will die,” he says, his throat going tight with the horror of that statement. “She will, and so many others will too, if you don’t give us that anti-serum. More children will lose their parents, just like you did. You’ll be responsible for thousands of deaths. But you can change that. You have the opportunity, you can—you can help. You can help.”

Linard almost looks normal. Almost. He’s so close.

“With what I’ve done,” Linard says, shaking. “I can’t come back from that.”

“It was that hatred inside you, the experiments Osborn did, that side he forced on you, but that’s not who you really are. I know that. You can show everybody that, if you just—give me the anti-serum. I can help.”

Peter stares at him, feels the fear wrapping a tight band around his chest and pulling it taut. 

“You’re not Mr. Negative. Not in your heart. You don’t want all those people to die. You don’t want more loss. You want revenge and I get that, I get it, but they don’t deserve it. Osborn does, and we’ll make him pay, but not like this. Not this way.”

And then there’s a rumbling. They all look up and around—it sounds like something big is approaching, something bigger than any of them, and the last thing Peter sees before the ceiling bursts is the look on Linard’s face. No longer negative.

The technicians scream and Otto’s tentacles crash down into the lab, sending down beams and tables and just about everything that was in the floor above them. Something hits him and Peter stumbles back, slams against the far wall. He can hear Linard scrambling too, and he keeps thinking _the anti-serum, the anti-serum, no, no, no—_

“Kid!” Tony screams, just as Peter puts his mask back on, and a column crashes down, separating the two of them before Tony can make it over to him.

“I knew you would fail!” Otto’s voice screams, all full of rage, still tearing into the room and everything around it. “I knew it! I never should have trusted you! Useless, you’re useless!”

Peter looks up, holds his arms over his head just as more metal crashes down, and that’s when he sees it.

Linard is half crushed under the new and shifting rubble, but he’s got the vial in his hand. Small, and vulnerable, but unbroken. He’s closer to Tony now than he was to Peter before.

“Iron Man,” Linard says. “Take it. Take it.”

Otto isn’t fully in the room yet, suspended by his tentacles, but he’s coming. “No!” he yells. “No, no!”

Tony grabs the vial with as much gentleness as Peter figures he can muster, given the situation, and he looks at Peter, still holding the rubble up above his head. It’s heavy, but he can move it. He’s got this.

“Go,” Peter says to him. “Go, go, I need you to go. Take it to Bruce, please.”

“Pete,” Tony says. “I can’t leave you.” Otto tosses more rubble down, and Tony tries to blast it back, knocking some away to get Linard free, but Otto’s upon them now, bursting down into the room. His tentacles go wide, wreaking havoc, and Peter strains, knocking the rubble off and grabbing onto one of the tentacles as it makes a move for him.

Peter launches himself at him. “Go, Tony!” he yells. “Go, go, now!”

Peter doesn’t have time to see what happens next, because he’s punching, dodging, grabbing tentacles left and right. They run into lab equipment, slam through walls, and he hears screaming, can’t tell who it is because he’s single-minded now—his own anger and betrayal is getting a hold of him, and he can hardly see. Just a blur of muted colors and Otto’s sneering face, relentlessly pursuing him. 

It’s like some sick dance, and they crash through the next lab and the one after that, decimating hallways and equipment and everything all around them. Peter’s wounds pull and ache, but he doesn’t let that stop him. He can’t.

“Where’s Osborn?” Peter yells, as they stumble into a big conference room. His knees hit the back of a thick wooden table and he falls backwards, because one of the tentacles is grabbing it and hurling it at him. Peter catches it, gritting his teeth, and he throws it right back, knocking Otto hard against the wall.

It doesn’t seem to deter him. There’s a line of blood slipping from the corner of his mouth but he quickly wipes it away, starting forward towards Peter again. The tentacles hit the floor with loud cracks, destroying the tile, nearly breaking through to the floor below.

“He’s on the roof,” Otto says. “Which is where we’re going right now.” He rips the chandelier out of the ceiling and throws it at Peter, and just as Peter is priming to catch it, one of the tentacles surges forward and grabs him.

He hates that he fell for that distraction and he yells out, fighting hard to get free. He didn’t think Otto could move this fast, but he should have known, with the advances he clearly made with the neural interface. The tentacle squeezes him and they’re blasting through the room beside them, full of computers and offices, and then they’re breaking through the outside window. Peter rips at the tentacle that’s wrapped around him, yanks pieces off of it, and it sparks and sputters. The squeezing hurts, but the suit stays strong, keeping its shape. Glass is flying everywhere but none of it comes close to scratching the metal, and when Peter pulls another seemingly vital piece off the tentacle, Otto gives up and tosses him up towards the roof.

He lands up there, hits hard and rolls out, nearly off the other side. He quickly looks around, and sees Norman Osborn over on the other side of the roof. He isn’t restrained but he definitely looks worse for wear, not calm and collected in one of his tailored suits like Peter is used to seeing, but dirty and bloody, his shirt and pants ripped. Peter doesn’t see Vulture flying around anymore, and he doesn’t see Tony or Rhodey either.

He doesn’t have time to worry.

The whole building shakes as Otto climbs back up, and Peter feels a renewed sense of anger flow through him when he sees what he’s become. He starts shooting webs at him as soon as he’s in range, everything he’s got—impact, bomb, trip mines, electric, all of it, and they drape around Otto’s frame and the long curving tentacles like some kind of nightmare Christmas tree. Peter latches on and zips over to him, continuing with a barrage of hits. The night settles around them, smoke and fire, screams and fighting in the distance. Helicopter blades whipping through the wind.

“I cared about you,” he says, hitting Otto hard across the jaw. “You—you were important to me—you—you _used_ me—”

“I cared about you too, Parker,” Otto says, knocking him off, sweeping his legs out from under him. Peter wrenches himself away as one of the tentacles reaches out for him, and he tries to remind himself to stay away from where Osborn is. “I cared,” Otto continues. “I did. But we’re on different paths. We always were. I hoped you would stay away, I hoped you’d take my warnings seriously—”

Peter shoots more webs, slides under another attempt to grab him, and slams his fists down hard on the closest tentacle he can reach. He sees it buckle, the metal bowing inward grotesquely, and he keeps pounding and pounding, trying to take it apart. “No!” he screams. “You knew I couldn’t, you _knew_ —”

One of the other tentacles hits him hard across the head, sending him flying. He’s dazed for a second but he shoots a web, swings from the tall satellite in the middle of the roof. He drops back down, gets a glimpse of Osborn cowering, trying not to fall.

“This is justice!” Otto yells. “For Linard, for me—”

“Linard had no choice in what happened to him!” Peter yells back, his throat going tight again. “You’ve made your choices, Otto. You’ve made yourself...this. You’ve warped your own mind with the goddamn...neural interface. You knew what it would do to you and you did it anyway. You wanted this.”

“Yes, I wanted this!” Otto says, surging towards him again. 

Peter triggers resupply and shoots as many webs as he can, watches them wrap around Otto and pin one of the tentacles to his side. He can see the connection the pack has to the base of Otto’s neck, and Peter knows he has to sever it to end this, to take away his control. He has to get close enough to pull it out, while avoiding the tentacles. 

The combat analyzer quickly guesses Otto’s next move, and Peter slips under the tentacle before it can grab him. He wonders what Otto has planned, bringing them up here. He can imagine some kind of public execution for Osborn, Otto definitely hates him enough. But what was he planning for Spiderman? 

“Are you gonna kill me?” Peter asks. “After everything? All we’ve accomplished together? After all we’ve done?”

Otto is too fast, and he yanks Peter forward by his arm, enough to wrench a yelp of pain out of him. “You could join me,” Otto says. “Help me change the world, like we always planned—”

Peter grabs the tentacle and lets out an electric burst, which shorts something out, because it releases him, falling limp.

“No,” Peter says, and the visions of the future that included Otto slowly fade. “Even without the neural interface, you’re...too driven by hate. You don’t wanna change, you just...you just wanna hurt. You just want control.” He feels sick, his own emotions threatening to ruin him, and he watches Otto’s anger contort his face.

Peter has to end this. He dodges, and it feels like the whole world is twisted into slow motion as he slips under three tentacles coming his way at once. He shoots as many webs as he can, ups the strength and the capacity so they wrap tighter, and for a brief, shining moment, Otto is immobilized. Peter latches on to the satellite and swings around, landing on Otto’s back. The pack housing the tentacles is pulsing, sparking, and Peter grabs onto the connection at the back of Otto’s neck, severing it.

“No!” Otto yells, as all four tentacles drop down, useless hunks of metal now instead of the fighting machines run by Otto’s mind that they were moments before. Peter and Otto both drop, and Peter grabs the pack on Otto’s back, ripping it off and tossing it away. The tentacles all screech against the rooftop until the whole thing comes to a halt, nearly hanging off the edge of the building.

Peter breathes hard, collapsing beside Otto’s prone form.

“Parker,” Otto breathes. “Please, please—you can’t let them take my arms. You can’t, you can’t, without them I’m nothing, without them—I’m stuck, I’m stuck in this _useless_ body—”

Peter shakes his head, clutching at his middle. “I’ll make sure you get the best care,” he says, his head pounding. 

“Please,” Otto says, reaching out for him. “I didn’t mean it, I didn’t, you know me, you _know me_ , Peter!”

Peter stares at him. “I do,” he croaks. “And I know what you believe. What brought you here. To all this.”

Otto’s eyes go dark, and he wrenches his trembling hand away. There’s something like betrayal in his gaze, and Peter tries not to let it get to him.

“The city deserves it,” Otto says. “For supporting someone...like him.”

Peter breathes hard, struggling to his feet. He can’t take this conversation anymore, he can’t take this whole situation. On one hand, it makes him feel numb all over, and on the other, he feels like someone is setting him on fire. He walks over to where Osborn is, and sees that the man is standing now.

“He was gonna murder me!” Norman says, pointing over at Otto.

“The Devil’s Breath,” Peter says. “You created it. You commissioned Fisk. You did this.”

“It wasn’t supposed to go anywhere,” Osborn says. “We were still experimenting, we have been for years…” He trails off, looking down at his hands. “You don’t know what you’re capable of doing when it comes to saving someone you love.”

Peter looks off towards the tower. The red A shining bright in the dark. “I do know,” he says. He came here, willing to do what it took to get that serum, to take Otto down. He hadn’t thought about it in real words, but he was willing to die to complete his mission. If it meant keeping Tony safe. If it meant saving May.

“I do,” Peter says. “But I’d never work with someone like Fisk to do it. Or alienate people like Otto. He was...he was supposed to be your friend.”

“He was,” Osborn says, his brow furrowing. “He was my friend.”

Peter sighs, the worry he’d pushed down earlier quickly rising up again. “Karen,” he says, turning his back on Osborn. “Can you call Yuri? She’s gotta….get up here with a chopper, finish this up.” He looks at Otto, trying to drag himself over to the tentacle pack, moving slowly, gritting his teeth. Peter sighs again. “I’ve gotta get back to the tower.”

“ _I will_ ,” Karen says.

“Wait,” Peter breathes. “Linard, is—what happened to Linard?”

She presents the map again, and Peter sees the green dots of the three technicians, a couple floors down from where they were. But there isn’t a fourth dot anymore.

“ _I’m sorry, Peter,_ ” Karen says.

Peter closes his eyes, and feels them burn with tears.

~

Tony picks up the third time Peter calls him.

“ _Sorry, sorry bud. I got it to the tower. Are you alright?_ ”

“Thank God,” Peter breathes, continuing to swing with a lot less tension now. “Yeah, yeah, I’m—it doesn’t matter, how long is it gonna take Bruce to make more? I know he can’t start curing people until he’s got a base.”

“ _He wasn’t sure, but he’s got faith he can do it fast._ ” Peter hears some loud noises in the background, and then he sees an explosion in the distance.

“What’s going on?” Peter asks. “Are you okay?”

“ _I’m good,_ ” Tony says. “ _Rhodey and I are taking care of business around town. And we got a few special guests on our side._ ”

Lightning scatters across the sky and hits multiple points around the city, and Peter’s eyes go wide. “Thor?” he asks.

“ _Finally picked up the goddamn phone. Could have used a God at the beginning of this thing, but we’re making up for lost time. So we’ve got him helping. And Strange, and Scott._ ”

Peter feels a wave of relief, and he keeps swinging towards the tower. “Do you need my help too?” he asks.

“ _No, no. You’ve done enough. Go to the tower, be with May. I’ll meet you soon._ ”

~

The next couple hours are worse than the drug trip he went through with the poison. If Bruce were to use what they have of the anti-serum to cure even one person, he wouldn’t have enough to make more to distribute to everyone that’s sick. So Peter has to watch May dip, decline, get sicker and sicker until she’s on the edge of death. The rest of them do too while Bruce works, while Helen and the nurses go from bed to bed to keep everyone from flatlining. Tony, Rhodey and the others stay gone, and Peter sees their accomplishments on the news, as well as his own. Yuri gives interviews, talks about Otto, announces Linard’s death. Osborn, surprisingly, stays silent. Peter wonders how long that’ll last.

Peter sits by May’s side while she’s miles away, a place he’s been before, a place he never wanted to share with her, despite the certainties in life, despite how hard he’ll fight against it when the time comes. He sits and he clutches at his own hands because he can’t hold hers, and he doesn’t try and stop the tears from coming. There’s nothing to hide here, where she can’t see him. There’s no one judging him.

“Please,” he breathes. “Please, please, please.” He opens his eyes, looks at her. She looks what she is—deathly ill, and it turns his stomach how close they’re cutting this. “Just hold on,” he whispers. “Just hold on a little bit longer. Just a little bit longer.”

He slips in and out of states of panic, and finally, what feels like a thousand years later, the door to the med bay slams open, and Bruce strides in.

“I’ve got it,” he says. “I’ve got it, I’ve got it.”

Peter leaps from his seat and he feels a selfish urge go through him, a demand at the back of his throat of _give it to her first!_ But he stays silent, watches as Helen and the nurses gather around Bruce to get what they need. They separate just as fast, ready to conduct a coordinated attack on this virus, and Bruce heads Peter’s way. He barely looks at him, just takes hold of May’s IV and injects something into it. Peter watches closely, like there’s gonna be some kind of miracle light or chorus singing in the distance, but Bruce just pulls back the needle and moves on.

“Bruce,” Peter says, watching him move over to Steve. Peter feels dizzy, like he might collapse. “Uh. How—how long—”

“Shouldn’t be long, if I did my job correctly,” Bruce says, only briefly looking at him. “Won’t be an instant up and at ‘em, but...it’ll do what it’s supposed to.”

Peter braces his hand on the arm of his chair, falling into it. “Thank you,” he breathes.

“We should all be thanking you,” Bruce says, moving over to Miles.

Peter doesn’t feel like he did anything. He just feels tired.

~

Peter stops himself from falling asleep. He watches May’s numbers diligently, watches her color come back, watches her chest rise and fall with breathing that’s closer to normal. He looks around, checks on the others, and thankfully, they didn’t lose anyone here. Everyone seems to be getting back to normal, and Bruce says he expects them to wake up within the next couple of hours. 

“Osborn’s guys really knew what they were doing,” Bruce says. “The sample was strong.”

Peter shakes his head. “You were the one that took care of this,” he says. 

Bruce smiles a little sadly at him. “A lot of the other bases weren’t as lucky as we were. Losing people left and right before I could even get the anti-serum to them.” He shakes his head, swallows hard. 

Peter can’t think about it. Can’t believe that Otto did this. Can’t believe that he has this kind of evil in him, and all he wanted to do was fuel it.

“Peter,” Tony’s voice says, at the entrance to the lab.

Peter looks over, sees him there, wearing regular clothes and sporting a few new cuts and bruises. Peter feels that same safety that Tony’s presence brings, like things might actually get back to normal, now that he’s here. Tony walks over as Peter gets out of his seat, takes him by the shoulder when he gets close.

“Where are the others?” Peter asks.

“Still out there cleaning up,” Tony says. “You wanna go sit down somewhere? Take this surgical mask off? Bruce says you’ve been in here for a while.”

Peter’s eyes dart over to May again and he worries he’ll miss her, worries she’ll wake up the moment he walks out, but Tony squeezes his shoulder and it makes him realize how much is going on in his head. How sitting in here has been making him stew in it, drown in it. He looks at Tony and nods. Tony nods back, and leads him towards the back entrance to the med bay.

They walk out, Tony with an easy arm around Peter’s shoulders, and they go a little down the hallway to the small sitting room at the front of the west wing. Peter moves towards the red lounger he usually chooses when they wind up in here but he doesn’t sit down, not yet. He pulls the mask off his face and sets it on the back of the chair, and Tony takes his off, too. He walks over and stands beside Peter, craning his neck to look at him.

“How are you?” Tony asks, softly.

Peter blows out a wavering breath, but doesn’t say anything. 

Tony keeps looking at him, and he clears his throat. “National guard came in,” he says. “Sable was...essentially committing war crimes, given the situation, so they had to be asked to stand down. So they’re not looking for Spiderman anymore.” He puts his hands on his hips, looks down at the ground, then up at Peter again. “Rhodey took care of Scorpion and Vulture...Toomes, uh—he’s not gonna spill anything about you. He said he wasn’t planning on it to begin with—”

“What’s going on with Otto?” Peter asks, his own voice sounding foreign and too loud in this space.

“Uh, he’s in custody,” Tony says. “He’s...he’s headed to Ryker’s for now, The Raft once he’s processed.”

“He’ll need medical care,” Peter says, tears stinging at his eyes.

“I know,” Tony says. “He’ll get it.”

Peter covers his mouth with a trembling hand, and it all feels like it’s crashing down on his head. He looks up at Tony, stepping away from him, nearly knocking into the chair. “I wish you hadn’t—I’m glad you can suit up, I’m _glad_ , I’m glad you were there but I—but I just—I almost lost May and I could have—I could have lost—I could have—”

“Hey,” Tony says, taking him by the shoulders. “Hey, hey—breathe, Pete. Breathe.”

Peter sucks in a breath, almost chokes on it, and then he draws in another one, closing his eyes. He leans in, pressing his forehead against Tony’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Tony says, gripping the back of Peter’s neck. “Seriously, ever, and especially not about this. Look how much you’ve dealt with. Look what you’ve done, huh? You saved everyone, Peter. While worrying about me, and May, and having to fight someone you cared about. Peter, you’re—” He ruffles Peter’s hair with his other hand. “I’m in awe of you, kid.”

Peter shakes his head, the tension still tight in his shoulders. He feels strangely separate, unable to look at the world right now that it’s tilted like this. 

“It’s okay,” Tony breathes. “It’s alright, it’s all over. It’s over, Pete. You can rest now.”


	10. epilogue

Peter watches them all start waking up, slowly at first and then in a sudden wave, one after the other after the other. Natasha wakes up with a start, sweat on her forehead, thrashing around like she thinks she’s still in the middle of a fight. Steve’s eyes flutter open like he’s in some sort of fairy tale, and it takes Tony and Bruce both to remind him what happened. Clint and Sam wake up at the same time, and Sam immediately asks for May, which endears Peter to him a little bit. Just a little bit. The nurses take away the restrictions around the beds, letting normalcy settle around them instead.

Peter is staring off at Miles and his mother, watching them talk softly to each other, when he hears it.

“Peter.”

He whips around, nearly hurting himself in the process—May’s eyes are open. She’s looking at him, she’s—she’s awake. He’s seen this moment so many times in his head since all this started, over and over in his brightest hopes, glimmering amongst the darkness of his fears, but it’s finally here. Real. Solid.

“May,” he says, breathless, scooting forward and grabbing her hands. “How—how’re you feeling, are—are you okay?”

She squints at him, shifting a little bit. He shakes his head, reaching out and gently pressing on her shoulder.

“Try—try and relax, it’s okay, you’re good, you’re at the tower—Sam’s here, he’s okay, he was—he was sick too, but he’s good now—”

“Devil’s Breath?” she asks, her voice weak, but her eyes are alert and they continue to search his face. “We—we saw it on the news—”

Peter’s throat goes tight. He’s been so deeply entwined with this whole thing that it feels strange to look at it now that’s it’s done. He can’t shake that feeling, hasn’t been able to since he made it back here and realized how changed the landscape of his life was. “Yeah, but its—it’s done now, it’s over.”

A note of fear flashes across her face and she squeezes his hands tighter. He still doesn’t know the details of what went down with all of them, how they fell ill, what their last moments were like before the darkness, and he hasn’t been listening when some of the others have discussed it. It makes him nervous. He can’t imagine what’s on her mind right now, how many questions she must have. 

“Are you alright, baby?” she asks, softly, managing a small smile. “I know if it’s done, you—definitely had something to do with that. Are you alright?”

His face contorts immediately, when presented with that question. From her. Awake, alive, safe now, after all he’s been through. When presented with the fact that no, he’s not alright. He’s not alright at all. A small sob escapes and he leans down, resting his head on her shoulder. He doesn’t say he’s sorry, even though he has that inclination. He just cries. Cries, for all the things he lost since he took down Wilson Fisk. Cries in pure happiness that she’s alive, that she’s alright again, on the road to recovery. Cries because she’s here to help him through it, and everything that’ll stick with him because of this in the months and years to come.

“It’s alright, honey,” she says, still soft, still weak, but reaching up to card her fingers through his hair. “It’s alright, I’ve got you. It’s alright.”

He’s got them both. May and Tony. He’s got them both now. And despite everything, this insane, horrible situation, that’s the most important thing. That’s what matters.

~

May and Tony eventually usher him out of there, and Peter lets them once he sees that May is on the upswing. Miles keeps trying to catch his gaze as he’s leaving, and Peter knows he has questions, and he makes a promise to himself to explain what the hell went on once he gets some rest. Lots of talking about himself in the third person, references to Spiderman, but the kid deserves to know what he got caught up in. What his dad died in the middle of.

Peter sleeps for what feels like a week, and they let him. Whenever he wakes up he makes a point to check in on May, find out how she’s healing, but before long she’s rushing him back to bed again. He feels his body melt into the mattress and for once, he just tries to relax, not letting himself think about what’s going on out there. A few scrolls through Twitter inform him that Thor is putting in a lot of face time at the medical bases, and the people in the pictures look like his presence is lifting their spirits. 

Peter eats when they bring him food, but otherwise, he drifts. He forgets. Or at least he tries to.

~

“How’s May?” Miles asks. His eyes dart up, past Peter’s head, but he quickly meets his eyes again.

“Good,” Peter says. “A lot better.” The wind blows through, and he squints against it. It’s been a week and half since everything ended, and he’s finally getting to sit down with Miles and just talk. They’re out on one of the balconies at the tower, and Miles seems like he’s on edge. Probably because half the world’s superheroes are milling around behind them. He even seems intimidated by Pepper, but Peter guesses he doesn’t really blame him on that one. 

Peter leans on the arm of his chair. “But how are you—for real? Bruce is gonna know if you’re not telling him everything. Never a good idea to piss the Hulk off.”

Miles sucks in a big breath, looking around again. “No, no, I’m fine—Honestly, I’ve been meaning to ask you—how the hell did I—wind up here, to begin with, you know? When I was sick? Like why didn’t I wind up at one of the regular places?”

Peter laughs a little bit. “Uh—because you and May were both found close together. And they were bringing her here, so...it just wound up that way. Lucky, huh?”

Miles scoffs, grinning. Peter doesn’t say that he wanted to look out for him, that he’s glad they brought him here. He knows Tony did it because Peter cares about the kid, especially after what happened to Officer Davis. It feels like a strange sort of circle coming together, like Peter might eventually become to Miles what Tony is to him. A mentor.

“You know, I never see Spiderman,” Miles says. “Like, I’ve been here on and off since I woke up and I haven’t seen that guy once.”

Peter considers telling him. Just saying it, like it’s nothing, like it’s normal, an everyday conversation. 

“Yeah,” he says, instead. “He keeps to himself, mostly. I’ve only met him once.”

“Well I don’t blame him, after everything that he just _did_ ,” Miles says, raising his eyebrows. “God—did you see—I mean, wow, it was—it was crazy, he’s amazing. He’s the coolest—did I tell you he saved me the other night? Before all this crap happened? Bunch of guys were like, trying to mess with me and he just swooped in—”

Peter tries not to smile too hard, tries to act surprised. “What? No—no, you haven’t—you hadn’t mentioned that.”

Miles grins, sitting up and getting more animated. “He was—Peter, you think I’ll meet him sometime? Like for real, cordially? I mean I met him when this happened, but like—like a real meeting, like—shake hands, my name’s Miles, you know?”

“Yeah,” Peter says, thinking about the future. “Yeah, I definitely think we can—arrange that.”

~

It takes him another two weeks to put the suit on again. He doesn’t know what does it, what the final straw is. He just sees it in his closet at the tower—his original suit, fixed up after the beating he took at The Raft. It looks perfect. Like nothing ever happened.

May and Pepper catch him in the hallway.

“Oh,” May says, and it’s clear she’s trying not to sound shocked at his appearance. “You’re, uh—”

“Yeah,” he says, trying not to waver, twisting the mask in his hands. “I just thought—”

“No, it’s good,” May says, exchanging a look with Pepper. “I’m glad.”

“I agree,” Pepper says. “I know people will be happy to see Spiderman again.”

Peter lets out a breath, nodding. He manages a smile. “You’re doing the finale of season three tonight, right?”

“Peter!” May says, holding up one finger like she used to do when he was younger. “If you spoil anything again, I swear to God—”

“This is what happens when he and Tony watch things without us,” Pepper says. “They hold information over our heads.”

“Use it to be little shits,” May says, but she’s grinning at him.

“It’s LOST,” Peter says. “You guys should have been on the bandwagon a long time ago.”

“Go off and be a hero, kid,” Pepper says. “We’ve got a date with Mr. Sawyer.” She braces her hands on her stomach, walking away from him and towards the TV room.

“I’m telling Tony!” Peter says.

May leans in and kisses Peter on the cheek. “Sayid’s more my speed, but Sam already knows.”

“Ugh,” Peter groans, but he tugs her into a hug anyways. 

“You sure you’re okay, sweetheart?” she asks, rubbing his back.

“As long as you are,” he says, tucking his face into her shoulder, breathing her in.

~

He sits on the edge of the roof, swinging his legs back and forth. He thinks about Linard, the extent of the loss and suffering in his life, how it twisted him, amplified his pain. All of that, due to Osborn, and Peter gets flashes of his own accident. That darkened room, the pulsing red spider that started it all. He knows how lucky he is, that his accident lead him here, to this life, instead of the places Linard’s took him. Peter became a hero, Peter found a family for himself and for May. He wishes he could have done more, for Linard. He wishes he could have saved him. 

He can see The Raft from here, the spot where they nearly killed him, and he thinks of Otto. He’s locked up there now, all his potential wasted and wiped away by his hate. Peter tries to let him go. Tries to ball up the blame he’s placing on himself and toss it away. He can hear Tony’s voice in his head telling him he doesn’t deserve it. 

“You don’t deserve it,” he whispers, the wind whipping all around him. 

He pulls out his phone, answers another text from Ned. Schools around the city have been out because of the crisis, but they’re supposed to open up again next Wednesday if everything goes according to plan. He’s seen Ned a couple times since it all happened, and thankfully, the Devil’s Breath didn’t get to him. They’ve both been wondering how all the time off is gonna affect their last year of high school, but Peter guesses they’ll figure it out somehow.

His phone buzzes again and his heart jolts when he sees it’s a text from MJ. He clicks to open it.

_Hey. Haven’t heard from you….hope you’re not dead :)_

He chews on his lower lip. Yeah, soon, like….super soon...he’s gotta set up that Taco King and movie Saturday. He debates on what to respond with for what feels like forever, and eventually he decides on the sunglasses emoji, which he regrets sending as soon as he sends it.

“Oh look,” Tony says, from behind him. “It’s Spiderman! Wow, that’s crazy, what’s my favorite superhero doing up here?”

Peter looks over his shoulder, and nearly jumps out of his skin. Because it’s not just Tony. It’s Iron Man. He’s not wearing the same suit he wore the night of the battle, it’s one Peter’s more familiar with. From back before all the shit with Thanos. When they worked side by side and things were easy. Well, easier. And instead of striking him with sadness and a longing for the past, it makes him feel like he might be able to move on. Like he might be able to get on track again. 

He’s done it before.

He puts his phone away. He twists around, perching on the ledge in the way that usually makes Tony anxious. “You going somewhere, old man?”

Tony has his helmet tucked under his arm and he scoffs. “The sass on this one. The utter disrespect. First, I have to listen to my wife waxing poetic about Sawyer from LOST and now you—old man? Old man?”

“You know I’m always honest,” Peter says, grinning.

“To a fault,” Tony says. He walks over, giving Peter that begrudgingly fond look. “You still doing alright?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Peter says. “I’m fine.” And for once, it doesn’t feel fake. It doesn’t feel like an excuse. He’s been setting his troubles aside, trying to work through them. And maybe he isn’t perfect yet. Maybe it isn’t all as it should be, not quite. But, for now, he feels fine. He looks up at Tony—Iron Man—and finds himself smiling. “I know I freaked out, and like—I mean, it still worries me, because I’m...paranoid about you and May, always, but—it really does mean a lot to, uh—see you like this. In the suit. And it meant a lot to—have you helping me. I needed you, I did and I just. Well.” He hops off the ledge and straightens up, walking past Tony a little bit. “Thank you. Thanks. You’re the best, you know that. And still the coolest.”

Tony scoffs, walking after him. “Pete, whenever you need me, you’ve got me. They could amputate both of my legs and I’d still get into a suit if you needed me to.”

Peter nods, blowing out a breath. It felt so good, to work with Tony again, to have his support. And to have Rhodey, Thor, Strange and Scott come through for him too—it sorta makes him weepy to think about it. Let alone the fact that all the others came to his aid and nearly died because of it. He loves them all, so much. He remembers what he was thinking before, what Spiderman gave him. It gave him a family. A big, superpowered family.

“And kid—I might have said this already, but I need to reiterate—what you’ve been doing, since we rebooted the damn world—it’s amazing. You stepped up in a big way when all of us had to take a backseat, and I really saw you in action during all this—you’re an incredible leader. I’m always gonna worry about you, but now I know, really _really_ know—you can take care of yourself.” He puts one hand over the glowing center in his suit. “I feel like—a mama bird watching her baby bird fly for the first time. Catching his first big worm.”

“Oh my God,” Peter laughs, grinning.

“And,” Tony says, raising one finger, emulating May. “And, and—this makes me all the more confident that you will be absolutely ready and prepared when you head off to college.”

That sets off a couple alarm bells in Peter’s head. 

“And speaking of college. Peter’s college. Peter’s college choice.”

Peter hums to himself, and walks past Tony again, grabbing his mask off the edge of the roof. “I’m gonna go patrolling, and I think you wanna crash that party. Am I right? I think I’m right.”

“I _think_ you’re attempting to avoid this conversation forever,” Tony says. “Which, in the long run, isn’t gonna work. You know that. I hope you know that.”

“I know that,” Peter says. “But right now? I’d rather jump off a roof than talk about college.”

“Peter—”

Peter turns his back to the ledge, holding his arms out, grinning at Tony and the look of warning in his eyes. Then he quickly puts his mask on, and jumps off.

The Avengers tower is taller than most of the buildings in New York, so Peter knows he can fall for a little while before he has smaller buildings to web onto. He can see The Raft from up here, that’s for sure, but he can see the rest of the city from up here too. And it’s beautiful, and vibrant, and finally, after all it’s been through—calm. 

It’s his city. No one can take it from him. Fisk can’t, Otto can’t, Osborn can’t, all the superpowered jerks in The Raft combined can’t either. They can knock him down, but he’ll always get back up. New York’s got Spidey, and Spidey’s got New York. 

He shoots a web and it catches, and then Iron Man flies up beside him.

“Oh, hey,” Peter says. 

“ _Hey, Spiderman. What’s the plan?_ ”

Peter smiles, shooting another web and swinging through the gleaming sky of the city he loves so much. “Follow me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you that supported me through this and kept me going, THANK YOU. Your comments and kudos always made my day, and I hope you enjoyed this journey. And for those of you who waited until it was finished to read it, I'm so happy you joined me and made it through to the end. Maybe I'll take on the DLC's storyline??? Probably not, LMAO, but it might be fun. Anyway, thank you SO MUCH for reading, let me know what you think, and if you're playing the PS4 game, GOOD LUCK! Watch out for those pigeons!


End file.
